#keklmao

The geneseed took well to his body, rendering him broad and strong as he came into adulthood aboard the Iron Blood. Silent amongst his brethren unless provoked, he was an unremarkable Astartes by all accounts, adept in the tasks he was conditioned for and loyal to a fault. He seemed to take peace in it, being pointed at things to kill without having to try and be anyone else. No, Manus had named himself hand for the very fact of what he was – the long and merciless reach of his Primarch across worlds uncounted.

Combat was where he truly came alive. He favored the chainsword and power fist, tearing foes apart with precision that seemed mindless to the untrained eye. Force and grace in beguiling combination served him well in the dueling cages, honing his body against his brothers in prayers of violence. Often could he be found tussling with his fellow legionaries, returning their harsh words and errant japes in the language every man and beast understood.

Handyman, they called him. That was the kindest of the names. For when Manus was not going about his duties, he could be found amongst the servitors, serfs and adepts of the repair decks deep in the ship’s guts, welding all sorts of scraps back to life. How he loved the machines. The complex, scintillating beauty in the crisp arithmetic of their make. The perfect synchronicity of a hundred thousand components singing life into metal. An exaltation of humanity’s technological achievements over millennia, all in service to the Emperor. Manus looked upon hammered iron plate encasing fiber-bundle muscles as a mother might behold her newborn child, and only the machine-tongued of the lower decks did not mock him in his rapture.

He looked at a set of Cataphractii plate the same way he looked at Perturabo. Or was he just admiring the Logos?

He’s in Forge Bay XII today, clad in his steeldust habit of hessian and mail links over his bodyglove. Unarmored is how he best likes to spend his time amidst the automata, feeling their power beneath his bare hands. His pale fingers splay across the smooth chassis of a Domitar-Ferrum, tracing a hazard stripe down into the clean weld-seam of its brass trim. An Artificer kneels nearby with a tray held aloft, bioplastic cerebra and nervelike tendril webs coiled in magnetic compartments. Near the construct’s head, a Techpriest’s servo-arm rhythmically swivels to and fro plucking at the wetware with fine mechadendrites, lasering the connections of its cortex.

The Domitar’s spirit had lain dormant since its last battle, and Manus wanted to be there for its awakening. This was a sacred thing after all, this rebirth. Several robed adepts of the Legio Cybernetica stand in a line to his left, humming binary numbers through their grilles. Bathing him in warm static that fills his brain with a pleasant numbness, like circuits tasting current for the first time. He closes his eyes in reverence and sweeps his fingers back across the automaton’s chestplate.

Heavy, cloying incense coils from swinging censers swathing the Domitar’s prone form. Manus luxuriates in it, in the sharp, sweet scent of rosin aiding the techpriest’s soldering and the comforting headiness of oily, metallic solvents.

“Not too long now,” he murmurs, hearing the chanting rise in pitch and fervor. “There you go. Come back to us.”

The chestplate shudders beneath his palm and a low, resonant thrum climbs through the deck plating, vibrating into his bones. One of the adepts calls a binary string and another answers it. The censer swings in a final circle. He feels the minute expansion of plating as systems pressurize, and then… the Domitar’s lenses flicker. Steady amber blooms to life, the spirit within present.

A smile graces Manus’s lips. He dips his head in benediction.

“Welcome home,” he breathes, sitting back on his knees and gazing into the construct’s lenses with utmost pride. “I knew you’d make it.”

The adepts file out in quiet procession, their work complete. The lead Techpriest follows without a word, knowing better than to linger when this particular Legionary takes interest in a subject. After a moment, the Artificer trails after him with a curious glance back at the kneeling Iron Warrior.

Manus doesn’t move.

The Domitar's systems are cycling up around him, its soft internal chorus filling the bay. Coolant moving through channels, gyroscopes orienting, the low magnetic hum of its weapon mounts running diagnostics. He listens with the patience of a man hearing a beloved piece of music after decades of bolter fire and screams.

The amber lenses track to him. Slow, considering.

He raises his hand, and the construct's gaze follows it.

“There,” he says softly. “Good.”

He doesn't know how much it remembers. The Techpriests had been cagey on that point, as they always were. Proprietary knowledge, sacred mysteries, the usual deflections. The wetware was largely intact, they'd said. Largely. He'd sat with that word for three days following the battle that had felled a construct he’d never seen fall before.

He reaches up and lays his palm flat against the side of the Domitar's head. The metal is warm now where it had been cold, humming faintly against his skin.

The construct makes a sound. Low, structureless, somewhere beneath language - not Binary, not anything with edges to it. Just sound. Just presence.

Manus feels something unknot in his chest.

“I know,” he says. “I know. Take your time.”

He stays like that for a long while with his hand against its temple, listening to it breathe itself back into being. The incense thins to a familiar stillness. Innumerable worlds writhe and burn across the galaxy but in here, there is only this. The warm chassis, the amber light, and the slow and patient work of returning.

Eventually the Domitar turns its head, just slightly, into his hand.