Author's notes: Filler chapter to handle some expining and to keep me writing rather than constantly tear at my scalp trying to figure out plot points.
While the World Eaters were united in their decision to turn their legion from the Imperium, their mortal servants and auxiliaries were not as unanimous in following after them. Not that they had long to voice their protest. The moment Angron made that fateful decision to stand against his brothers in defending the Vhalix people from extinction, his sons had gone to work in securing the fleet against mutiny. With their typical blunt and brutal efficiency, the World Eaters ascertained the loyalties of their fleet's human crew, mostly by breaking the necks of any who showed the slightest hesitation in the decision to turn against the Emperor. Very few were lucky enough to 'only' endure the mind-shredding interrogations of the few librarians the legions had left.
Fortunately for Lotara Sarrin, captain and Shipmistress of the Conqueror, she had the pleasure of avoiding any confrontation with the not-wholly reformed legionnaires. All doubts of her loyalties had been banished way beforehand, as she had been a part of the cabal that prepared for such an event ever since the primarch relinquished command of his legion.
It was far from a subtle thing, having to actually leave the bridge at irregur moments to meet with Kharn, the te Legion Master, Lhorke, and other commanders both mortal and Astartes. But by the World Eaters' standards though, they were the pinnacle of stealth and cunning. The human crew were trained or fearful enough to follow orders without question, allowing for whole deck sections to be cleared out for cndestine meetings, while surveilnce systems were 'malfunctioned' by judicious applications of force.
Enough groundwork was id that when Angron decred his disobedience against Imperial orders, the bridge crews of most of the World Eaters' ships were firmly loyal to the legion, allowing for minimal disruption of the fleet's formation as it moved against the Vlka Fenryka and Iron Hands.
The fleet's lower castes, like the chain gangs of the gun decks and menial servants that scampered throughout the ship, had their loyalties tied to the ship itself by literal generations of service within the ship. As much as the Iterators like to preach, an Imperial ship's lower decks was often host to communes of bondsmen, practically sves, who lived and died in service of the ship with barely any knowledge of the world beyond their assigned decks. Even the nobler legions, like the Ultramarines and Raven Guard, gave in to the needs of operational efficiency and let their ships' shantytowns continue to persist, though they did offer a glimmer of Imperial Enlightenment.
Apparently some legions instituted lotteries and commendations for their bondsmen to be promoted to the common ratings, allowing a slightest of chance at upward mobility within the ship's hierarchy. The Samanders supposedly brought over some of their homeworld's tribal culture. There were rumors that the Blood Angels sometimes went below decks to seek out personal servants to uplift, or even potential recruits.
The World Eaters did not practice any of that. With how the legion used to operate, the mortal crew only needed to be obedient and plentiful to meet their bloody, attritional approach of Imperial Compliance.
It made for an easy time when the fleet turned their guns on the VIth? and Xth?, and with the ratings already selected for blind obedience, it left only the more independent-minded officer and specialist csses to be dealt with. Having only a few thousand lieutenants, sergeant-at-arms and wing captains throughout the fleet to be culled by rampaging legionnaires meant that the operation was swiftly conducted with minimal hassle.
The minor massacre was a price well worth it, in the end. Having served with the World Eaters for decades already, Lotara shared some of their resentment against the Imperium for allowing the legion to be turned into rabid attack dogs. While she took pride in her command of a legion fgship, the fact that the XIIth? was often thrown into the bloodiest and hardest of combat zones, where savagery won over tactics and strategy, wore away any belief the captain had for the Imperial Enlightenment.
There was no great Truth to spread over void fields of obliterated wrecks or worlds turned into charnel houses. There was no glory or great valor to be found when the War Hounds, the Eater of Worlds, were unleashed. There was not even subjugation or conquest, only sughter. Just sughter. Rather than any sort of reformation, the reins of the World Eaters were only loosed when resistance needed to be turned into a bloody monument, a bloody example to the rest of the gaxy.
So when Angron and the entirety of his legion were freed from the violence-craving impnts, when shame and guilt drove the primarch to take the first steps to change himself and his sons to something more than rabid attack dogs, Lotara doubted that the Imperium would ever give Angron that option. His sons doubted as well, which was why they approached her and sounded her loyalties out in the first pce.
And now the legion once known as the War Hounds have finally broken free of their leash, bloodied and limping, but still alive. True to Angron's belief and Kharn's cautious optimism, the Nexus Unity took them in and generously allotted them their own private system to rebuild and reorganize.
Cynically, the Shipmistress of the Conqueror was rather relieved at the loss of life suffered so far. After Angron pledged himself to the Nexus, a whole nebu of automata had descended on the World Eaters' fleet to not only repair but implement upgrades to the battered ships. Lotara and the other human crew were forced to make pnetfall and live in neatly constructed prefab hab zones. Each city of dull-metal domes and blocks hosted an entire ship's crew.
With the casualties sustained during their flight here, it was a small, perhaps guilty, relief that Lotara and the other ship captains had the needs of several thousand fewer souls to worry about. Besides, if the upgrades that would be implemented on each ship were even half as good as what the Nexus representatives said they would be, the legion would soon have to figure out what to do with tens of thousands of soon-to-be jobless men and women.
Kharn raised the possibility that the obsolete crew would be made to popute this world, to serve as a future recruitment pool.
It was a problem that Lotara was happy to palm off to Angron. In the meantime, she tried to adjust to the simple comforts of her Nexus-assigned apartment, while overseeing this temporary city with the same iron-handed discipline that the residents were used to back on the Conqueror.
*****
Specialist Engineer Koriel Zeth, formerly an adept of the Cult Mechanicus, hummed as she walked through the storied hallways of the Conqueror. The interior of the World Eater's Gloriana-css battleship was brutishly minimalistic in design that she found appealing.
In her past life, Koriel would find herself meditating over the mysteries of every deck section and perhaps seeking to dig out whatever scraps of sanctioned knowledge that pyed a part in the construction of this great ship's systems. She might even be inspired by some of the more ancient systems to make a pilgrimage across forge worlds to glean some understanding of their intricacies.
Now though, after having the veil of mysticism removed and enjoying a thorough reeducation within the esteemed halls of Research Complex Ix, Koriel only saw the miracle of having so many suboptimal systems working together to produce such an effective battleship. It was perhaps a testament to human ingenuity and adaptiveness that allowed the crew of this vast vessel to make the best of borious, manual systems.
Older, less power intensive technology in the lighting and air ventition meant that the enginseers tending to the generatoriums could keep the ship running at 'safe' levels, just as how the use of servitors and chain-gangs and menials allowed biological fuel to repce half-understood electrical power generation.
In hindsight it was appalling to think that the Conqueror and its sister fgships were all considered state of the art by Mechanicum standards. With simple changes using the barest of Nexus technology, almost everything on this ship could be made at least a third more efficient and effective.
Installing autoloaders would triple macrocannon firing rates, and the same could be achieved for the nce batteries with properly crafted heatsinks and capacitors.
Repcing prayers and incense with actual proper wiring practices and regur system checks would stop the data servers from sparking dramatically.
Removing all extraneous ritual program loops would not only clear up significant digital storage space, but it would allow the ship's processes and diagnostics to run at more than half the speed.
It hurt to know that all of that and more could be achieved with the Mechanicum's current technology. It was only dogmatic religiosity driven by ignorance and fear that shackled them to such limitations.
Koriel sighed as she recalled her own liberation from those shackles. Sev had freed her and the other lucky souls from blind ignorance.
The Machine God was a farce, the worship of which was potentially even a danger to reality.
Sev though was a god, one that did not hide behind secrets and long lost traditions. One worshiped Sev not for the hope of insights or blessings, but because they fully understood the metanatural effects created from a retion between god and devotee. Rites were adhered to not out of blind dogma but because their results (and the results of poorly executing them) were well understood, complete with research documentation and recordings. Faith in Sev was not blind or unwarranted; the records of his many feats were clear and accessible for all to see.
To believe in him was to believe in a simple goal: Peace, through power.
It was through his power that Sev carved out a haven among the ruins of a nuclear apocalypse.
It was through his power that the nascent Nexus nds were secured, and allowed for undisturbed technological growth that would see the wastends cleansed.
It was through his power that his world continued to exist when ignorant or suicidal madmen breached the veil between dimensions or awakened eldritch beings.
And it was through his power that a world of barely two billion, that had only recently dusted itself off from the wreckage of its ruinous past, not only face down but also utterly defeat the Imperium's might.
With such a track record and the retive transparency of the Cult of Sev, it was hard not to follow him.
As part of her accepting her new life, Koriel had been one of the many Mechanicum converts who had completely abandoned her old cybernetics. Healing arches and carefully researched rituals made her transition back to mere flesh a single day affair. Now she strode through the halls of a Gloriana battleship without any technological augmentations. She felt the faint breeze of poorly ventited air against her skin, her nostrils picked up tang of dried blood, and endured the grimy miasma of sweat and violence and desperation that clung to the ship as any human would.
Free from the pretension of being separated from mortals by virtue of knowing scraps of ancient knowledge. Free from the delusion that she was somehow better by transmuting her humanity into something more machine-like.
Koriel was an engineer now, not a priest.
A simple augmented reality visor fed her all the information she needed on this physical pne and several metanatural ones, while runes painted onto her neck with Tiberium powder provided her all the protection she needed for her task. She wore pin work clothes that she chose because it was both practical for her task and fit her color preference, rather than to show off her station. When her break came up in a couple of hours time, she would enjoy a hearty beef stew because she rather fancied it over beef noodles or curry chicken pie or fruit pizza, not because it was prescribed by her faith.
It was a very pleasant change of pace.
"Ah." Koriel broke from her woolgathering as she reached the first gun deck for the day. It was hard not to sigh at the inefficient yout of the macrocannons, having to make additional space to allow the chain-gangs who had to literally drag each shell from the magazine to load their assigned cannons. Koriel tapped at her visor to bring up a view of the Conqueror's internal yout.
"Gun deck 2-5c…" She looked around her, and the former tech-adept began marking out boundaries with her finger. "Landing bay 2-11 is below here, gun deck 4-4 would overp on that section…" After zoning out the sections, Koriel used her past expertise to inspect the collection of oversized gears and jutting pipes for any critical systems. After mapping out the main wiring and highlighting console-shrines, Koriel stepped back and allowed herself a childish grin as the Nexus Sentinels swam past her to begin working.
Unlike the servitors and crude automata of the Mechanicum, these sophisticated robots could function without the need for lobotomized brains or data wafers, and served the Nexus Unity as both its main security and bor force. Through carefully curated programming and some metanatural bindings that were still not understood, they were an extension of Sev's will.
Koriel watched as cwed tentacles that tore through Astartes legionnaires now disassembled the gun deck with a swiftness that made the swarm look ravenous. Macrocannons were lifted whole and then relocated into new housings, while a canyon was carved out from the chain-gang's living spaces to host the new autoloader system. More Sentinels swam in from the void of space once the hull's shielding was removed, though Koriel wasn't affected by the encroaching vacuum thanks to her metanatural wards.
She kept grinning as she watched the storm of Sentinels renovate the deck, though she still kept an eye out for the areas she marked as critical. Standard protocol was to always be on the lookout in case something went wrong - flying debris, a malfunctioning robot, an environmental hazard, and so on. Even to the higher ups' knowledge, no issues were ever encountered throughout the Sentinels' countless hours of swarm-working, yet Sev had insisted for an eye to be kept on safety.
Koriel didn't mind having to stand around and watch. The tech-adept of her past life would have been sck jawed at the sight of so many soulless automata tearing up a storied ship, but the engineer of her present life just found the whole scene rather…cool.
