Been touching up my Ad Mech stuff over the day to make them fit in with the project. These are all models that were finished before I started the Saturnine project, but some were never based and none have earlier been seen as a whole unit. So something new even for those of you who followed that log as well! Very happy with how they look together and alongside the Saturnine unit, they add some colour without being over the top.
II Company, Adeptus Mechanicus Attached Unit, Magos-Economis Çamal-Diaz And Retinue
-TWO-
Like a scratching blue tide of dust, the analysis charts were flooding Magos Çamal-Diaz's senses as he connected into the datastack mainframe. The files were all decades old, and he could almost feel their reluctance of being opened again after such a long time of hibernation. Five point five zero two five seconds after connecting into the mainframe, they were all found and accessed, reluctant or not. So very slow, Çamal-Diaz thought. As one of the older members of the Mechanicus, he could vaguely remember a time when internal cogs were manufactered with more skill and electrical circuits had higher rates of energy transfer than in these more recent millennia.
Conclusion: We are decaying.
It was not a new thought, no, rather the opposite. Several times a day now, the notion hit home. Travelling on this dusty relic of a vessel did not help either. Two thousand six hundred seventy two years and twenty one days and six hours and twenty nine minutes and twenty nine... thirty... thirty one... seconds old. Thirty three. Thirty four. He could still remember the day when it was commissioned, as he had been the one in charge of the shipyard accounts. Forty one. Or, well, the planetary accounts, if truth be told, but it was only the shipyards that - forty six - really mattered. Forty eight. Forty nine.
Fifty.
It had been a glorious vessel then, of course just a Navy transport, but even these transports are a mighty sight compared to the intra-system ships that the forge mainly produced. Thirty minutes.
His sense for the aesthetic and symmetric (in theory - the same, Çamal-Diaz corrected himself) thus satisfied having added yet another full whole minute - the precise minute of half an hour, fittingly enough, the magos put the time circuits into passive mode again, and reactivated his connection to the economic analysis charts for the planet Marec 14. They were old, yes, but peculiarities of economies could always be traced far back in time, and there was a reasonable six point two five one nine six six one chance of finding a major reason for the Governor's secession within these files. As soon as he had presented the projection for Sector Command, they had - after five point six minutes of irrelevant discussion so typical of non-Mechanicus - approved his request to get access to the datastacks.
There are reasons more important by a magnitude of at least seven than any eventual cause for the Governor's secession within these datastacks though, Çamal-Diaz duly noted to himself, since the Governor and any planetary defence forces will - with a likelihood of ninety nine point two percent - be terminated within a month. The Magos was at a loss to comprehend the vying for status and honour which had led the Imperium to appoint two whole regiments for this twelfth-grade planet, yet he could comprehend the inefficiency and misuse of resources that it led to well enough. With a fifty-two percent reduction, being that of removing one regiment from the fleet, the resource efficiency of the invasion would go up by twenty percent, with a three percent margin of error. It would add eight days to the invasion time.
No, Çamal-Diaz was truly at a loss to understand non-Mechanicus commanders sometimes.
He had informed Sector Command of his concerns, and they had - to his honest surprise - agreed that the decision was perhaps not for the best, yet as he had estimated the costs for at this point changing the orders and relocating ships, crew, supplies, and a whole regiment, the savings were found to be negligible. The reallocation would have to take place after the campaign, and there was nothing to do about it, yet it still bothered him no end. He had already filled up a separate data plate with suggestions for improvement concerning Guard regiment allocation, and half another one with probability calculations of the first data plate reaching the right Administratum officials within his (very augmented) life time. The outlook was not good.
The logis engine was done with the analysis charts. Some part of him still worked at prime efficiency then, he noted with what might pass for satisfaction in a more human being.
Annoyingly, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. Production quotes had gone down during the last years before transmissions to the Imperium stopped completely, yet that was to be expected from a planet just before seceding, even if the magos had no doubts that it had annoyed Administratum bureaucrats incredibly at the time. He took pleasure in that fact.
Yet whatever the reasons for the Marec 14's secession from the Imperium were, they were not economical - or at least, the probability had now shrunk to zero point one one nine six percent. Something still bothered him about those analysis charts however, their blandness and utter normality aside, screaming silently in the back of his head.
That was of no import, however, and Çamal-Diaz pushed the thought from his circuits and reconnected to the datastacks to set about his real mission here, now that the overt one was done with. There were things on Marec 14 that were his, and his alone, to find out about.
-END OF PART TWO-
Cheers,
BTB
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Originally Posted by Yodhrin
