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“Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl, why have you skipped the comm queue?”
“Apologies, Im-pe-ri-al Re-gent Ro-boute Guill-i-man, have I overstepped?”
A sigh was mangled into a grating bark by transmission interference. “Say your piece.”
Cawl resisted the temptation to play at pomp. “Concern: pro-duct-ivi-ty de-cline ov-er two-hun-dred-point-fif-ty-three stand-ard Ter-ran days. Have you been incapable of rest?”
The Zar-Quaesitor and the Macragge’s Honour had been in rapport for ten days following a minor skirmish. An influx of auxiliary guardsmen and supply replenishments were a relief as he couldn’t find trustworthy forgeworlds in the sector. Of course, he would rather repay this sooner than later.
Through a backdoor, Cawl had acquired the Armor of Fate’s power draw logs. He inferred that Guilliman hadn't slept in Terran months and the regent’s weariness was a growing concern. The priests that accompany him report a shortening of patience and mild sluggishness. All measurable in milliseconds, yet consistent. He couldn’t allow Guilliman to waver. A mistake in battle or operation could be his last or the beginning of an accelerated end. His replacement would surely restrict Cawl’s projects or order his death.
And so here he was, providing a service to his benefactor.
“How have you acquired this information?”
“Con-tacts within the priests aboard your ship reported this concern to me. I request to perform di-ag-nos-tics on the ar-mor.”
“There is no need. My apothecaries-”
“Your apothecaries and other tech priests will never have my familiarity with the mech-an-isms that maintain your health. I request at the very least a time slot to exa-mine the ar-mor.”
“I accept on one condition...”
The Primarch’s med bay reeked of burning grease, sulphurous ash, and antiseptic. Guilliman himself was in a tangle of cords and tubes plugging into his armor’s internals as Cawl peered into each system. The power draw of the armor was the only set of logs Cawl could remote tap discreetly. The life support function wasn’t entirely his own creation and so to tamper was unwise.
He found nominal levels concerning reserves of stimulants and a slight increase in the administration of pain relievers. The Eldar soul stones loaned towards this endeavor were active and unchanged from before, ever incandescent. Even with his time experimenting with xenos technologies, he still couldn’t quite tell what indicated an error in those constructs.
After the systems were checked and no fault was accounted for, he momentarily halted his work.
“The mech-an-isms are well tended. However, I cannot rule out a fault in the in-ter-face ports. Do you permit the partial removal of the ar-mor at a ze-ro-point-ze-ro-ze-ro-five-five per-cent risk of injury?”
“Permission granted.”
As he disengaged security systems, he thought back to when they had passed through a garden on the way here. A garden on a voidship! A waste of space. A maintenance issue. Such luxuries reminded him of the illogical core to his patron. An upbringing in excess generates mental dependencies. If he had the opportunity, a Primarch grown under his advisory would not develop such weakness.
Cawl couldn’t say he enjoyed having such a reliance on Guilliman to continue his great works. But Guilliman was intelligent. There was no word between them, but he surely knew of the deadman’s switches in the armor’s systems.
It was a beneficial arrangement, if one Guilliman would have never entered of his own accord. This ensured a certain… trust between them. It would be mutual destruction to sabotage one another and in that there was assurance. He was among the more stable individuals Cawl remembered from millennia prior and he remained in that blessed category even after waking in a time so far removed from his own.
That was another point of superiority: experience. What were a few centuries of conquest to ten millennia of glorious pursuits? Despite the divine acuity Guilliman was imbued with, he could only hope to match just a portion of the immense wisdom Cawl held.
In the middle of thinking about how irreplaceable he was, he came across an anomaly: a cord on Guilliman’s nape did not give as he tugged it with his dendrites. He checked the clamp to be sure the bolt was loosened. A harder pull and a nearly imperceptible flinch made him halt.
“You have my go ahead,” Guilliman said.
Cawl gargled out strings of binharic cant which translated to something along the lines of, “Interesting,” “Strange,” “Undocumented,” “What is this,” “I must examine it,” and so on.
Guilliman tensed despite not understanding the holy language.
A scan found the cable had grown in diameter. Organic tissue crept up the connection. It was entwined with and in the process of replacing the fibers. Aberrations of the flesh like this were seen in Warp corrupted individuals, though it was usually both ways. The scan didn’t reveal any sprawl of invasive mechanical components in the Primarch.
“Your neu-ral flesh is overtaking the ar-mor's ma-chin-er-y.”
Dread edged into Guilliman’s voice. “What consequences await its culling?”
The biologis in him cocked its head as he considered what might result if this was left to continue in a Primarch. Alas, this individual was not disposable if all went wrong. “It has reached far-”
“Check the other interface ports,” Guilliman commanded rather quickly.
“Are you concerned? If so, why?”
“You remember Angron,” Guilliman stated.
“Yes.”
“Then you know. Check the ports.”
Cawl’s mechadendrites got to work. “A mech-an-ism consumed his mind. In your case, it appears your flesh is the consumer of the mech-an-ism.”
“That is not encouraging in the slightest.”
The other port on Guilliman’s nape had the same anomaly. Ports all along his spine were similarly affected.
“Do you remember my telling you that leaving the ar-mor on would be safe? Well, now we have learned otherwise. Every spin-al in-ter-face con-nec-tor is in proc-ess of assimilation.”
“Any theories?”
“Without further examination, I cannot be certain. The El-dar con-structs are suspect.”
“I wore the armor for years after stasis. Could the Ynnari have placed a logic bomb within it? This is a poor choice of payload, if it were that… You’re confident that there has been no change in the armor’s systems?”
“All is as it should be, aside from the neu-ral flesh.”
“Then the fault lies in m-”
“There can be no fault in a creation of the Omnissiah. Omnissiah. Omnissiah!”
“I am well assured there is no fault in my brothers.”
“You jest, but I am serious.”
“Then where does the fault lie, Belisarius? Perhaps this is an ailment that has coalesced at a devil’s leisure solely to inconvenience me.”
Now he’s just being downright snarky. “Mockery is an inefficient use of time.”
Wait…
“Roboute, that would have been my exact suggestion.” Cawl couldn’t discern if it was pure coincidence, a far shot logical conclusion, an intrusion into his mind, or some form of prescience. But yes, the Primarchs were crafted with resilience against mutation. It would be very unlikely this was accidental. It would have to be a Warp entity.
One look told Cawl that, if he wasn’t snared in tubes and wires, Guilliman would have his head in his hands. His imitation of humanity would convince most if not for his scale.
Ignoring the clear disdain for the idea, Cawl said, “I wager Seven and Nine.”
The far wall of the room grew distant and he terminated several processor threads. He cut his eyelense feeds and averted his eye from Guilliman for the sake of not heating his microprocessors with irrational calculations.
Less than a second passed before the phenomenon ended.
Guilliman’s trepidation and doubt in the idea carried through his pondering. “If they can act on me in such a way, then by what method? Has this always been within their capability? Is there an infiltrator?”
“The dark ones deny logic… But yes, audit your at-ten-dants.” It was reasonable suspicion, after all.
As they discussed ways to weed out hypothetical traitors, apothecaries arrived at Guilliman’s request. A biopsy was conducted on the aberrant tissue and they found nothing to denote malignancy. No cancerous growth- the cells underwent apoptosis as necessary. A spinal tap revealed nothing new. Wrong or right? It managed to root deep into the armor. He would have to replace a lot of internals.
The surgeries were without error. Merely the removal of spinal tissue offshoots and the interface hardware that had survived.
New issue: Guilliman removed the interface connections in his spinal column and did not replace them. The backdoor was also lost.
Such an action was illogical. It would reduce combat effectiveness! Why increase the buffer to his armor over a minuscule concern? He was guaranteed to regularly remove the armor at this point. The ailment itself was not extraordinary and easily resolved with surgeries.
Perhaps an omission could have been made for the sake of the Imperium. He could have convinced Roboute to commission terminator armor!