Chapter 176 The Return of the "Savior"
Daily Thought: Waiting is a virtue, but being waited for is not. (Enlightenment)
Calvin knew that Constantine's return would inevitably bring with him the greatest resources he could leverage.
But when he walked out of the official residence and looked up at the doomsday-like scene in the sky, he was still shocked by the background of these mechanical priests in the Omen Order.
Hundreds of black spots appeared from the end of the sky, and they were visibly enlarged and enlarged in the eyes of people on the ground, and finally turned into steel palaces. And they gathered in groups to block Calvin's entire vision, as if they had created a cosmic wonder like a solar eclipse with mechanical power.
This is not all. More small spacecraft fell like rain behind these large ones, and the source was a black cloud that was faintly visible on the horizon, which was many times larger.
You can't describe the magnificence of this scene in words. This is the embodiment of the highest essence of human industry since the Dark Ages, and it is also a scene that people who stay in the ignorant age on this planet cannot understand.
People within a hundred kilometers could see this doomsday scene. For this terrifying scene beyond their cognition, they could only kneel down and pray to calm their fear.
Fortunately, the visitors were friends, not enemies. Calvin locked his eyes on the pioneers, piercing through the flames on the steel bodies that were still rubbing against the air and burning fiercely, and found their unique marks.
The golden outer ring had teeth on the upper and lower saws, and the lion of the same color and texture looked up and roared. This is the exclusive emblem of the Omen Order, an organization under the Emperor's throne that is different from Mars and exists independently.
"Constantine!" Calvin chanted.
"Constantine!" Elvis' figure appeared behind Calvin at some point. He did not know the relationship between these outsiders and Calvin. He just held the individual communicator brought from the battle group mothership in one hand and spoke to Calvin in high Gothic that was difficult for the locals to understand.
"The other party calls himself Father Constantine and is broadcasting in plain text to find your location."
Elvis' eyes were fixed on Calvin's reaction in order to make the fastest choice.
If these outsiders were in Calvin's plan, then everything would be fine; if not, then he would have to discuss with the lord in front of him how to escape.
After all, even if the Primarch was without the support of the Legion, it would still be difficult to stop the might of the Mechanicus.
"Reply to him, I'm here." Calvin's voice made Elvis feel relieved. He converted Calvin's words into a communication code and sent it out with the instrument in his hand.
Then, as expected, he and Calvin and others soon saw a Forerunner ship in the descending spacecraft, which was turning towards them under the secondary adjustment of the rocket engine.
"Good day, Lord Calvin. With the blessing of the Emperor, I am lucky to have fulfilled my mission."
The figure of Father Octal Ursula Constantine appeared in the corridor of the lowered deck of the spacecraft, and behind him were several colleagues who were also wearing red robes.
The red robe on his body only made Elvis understand his identity, but the consecration prayer after he spoke, which was completely different from the members of the Mechanicus he had seen before, made this Astartes pharmacist really remember this special priest.
Compared with fifteen years ago, the priest's figure has changed greatly. His face remains the same, but his height has become almost equal to Calvin. The three-meter-tall burly body is hidden under the red robe, which makes people wonder how much of it belongs to the original human part.
This mechanical priest, who has obviously experienced many changes, has the same impression as Calvin, without too much courtesy. He said directly to Calvin:
"According to our plan, there are two options now. One is to intervene in this planet thoroughly and adjust its continental plates to adapt to our next development; the other is to completely abandon this place and start a new business on another neighboring planet to adapt to the next industrial nest layout and orbital factory deployment."
"Choose the second one. Migrate the agricultural population here to the new planet as the initial population of the industrial labor force. As for the northern people, leave them to the war group as a source of conscription."
With a light touch, Calvin decided the fate of the hundreds of millions of people here for thousands of years. And such a decision came from his understanding and evaluation of the environment here in the past ten years.
This place is not suitable for industrial planets to undertake production tasks, not only because the mineral resources on the entire planet are scarce, but this will not be a problem with the subsequent mining planets.
Its real problem lies in the lack of original petrochemical energy and the real industrial blood of the empire - promethium. This will greatly slow down the initial industrial deployment and industrial upgrading speed, and considering that there are already a huge number of people living here, how to carry out large-scale continental plate adjustments on the basis of avoiding major humanitarian disasters will also be a huge investment.
"Your will." Constantine nodded, then stepped back two steps to introduce several of his colleagues to Calvin.
"Solan, the deputy supervisor of casting, the great sage of command, the supreme leader of the 300,000 Titan Guards and nearly a thousand covenant priests under the order."
Constantine concisely selected the more useful (useful to Calvin) parts of Solan's countless titles, and then told Calvin.
Calvin also clearly smelled a familiar smell of "full of martial virtue" from the other party's huge body like an Astartes warrior in normal armor.
Not to mention that Constantine, as a mechanical priest, can be absolutely trusted for his rigor in data.
Since he said he was the leader of 300,000 Titan Guards, the man in front of him would definitely be able to give him 300,000 titanium alloy warriors, the number would only be more, not less, and the combat effectiveness would not be compromised at all.
"Emperor's blessing, sacred Primarch. May our meager power be used by you."
The mechanical sage with a strong military color took two steps, and after greeting Calvin politely, he returned to his position.
"Great Biological Sage Dewey Watson, Great Gene Master, Alien Sage, is the strongest person in the biological transformation of the Order. His representative works are the 22nd Edition of Gene Modulation Improvement, Biological Modulation Pack Beast, etc...."
The sage, whose body had no obvious traces of transformation and retained more of the characteristics of the original human body, also walked out of the ranks and bowed slightly to Calvin.
"Lorenz, the Lord of the Forge, the Mechanical Prophet, the Lord of the Force, the person in charge of the maintenance and upkeep of all Titans in the Legion."
Another red-robed sage walked out of the ranks.
Unlike the previous few, from the feature that the gear mark on his body occupies the entire outer edge of the emblem of the Order, this is a rare fundamentalist. His unique understanding of the Emperor's faith and the doctrine of the Mechanicus will make Calvin need to be careful with his words when communicating with him in the future.
"As for the remaining two..." Calvin's eyes also followed Constantine to look at the only two silent figures left, waiting for the former's story.
"They used to be the exclusive secret expansionists of the Order. Together with me, they were responsible for the data statistics management of the Order and participated in the translation and interpretation of the language in the machine soul. But now, they are my clones. If you have any questions, you can look for them when I'm not around."
As Constantine's voice fell, the two bodies that also had Constantine's consciousness opened their eyes and looked in Calvin's direction.
"Confirm identity, confirm authority... Good day, Lord Calvin." The same voice came out of their mouths.
Well, now Calvin understands the changes in Constantine's body and the reason why he was stuck at the agreed deadline.
The opinions within the Omen Order were not unified, and Constantine had to go through a fierce struggle before he finally gained the majority among the high-level leaders of the order.
These two mechanical sages whose consciousness had been absorbed were undoubtedly the original opponents, and now they were placed in front of Calvin as spoils of war.
It was just unknown what price Constantine had paid in this internal game...
The conversation at the first meeting ended here. Calvin learned from Constantine that this time he almost swept away all the resources that could be mobilized in the Omen Order and moved them all here.
In addition to the large construction ships and transport barges used to open up sites for material transportation and build star ports from the ground to the orbit, there was also one of the Omen Order's treasures on the orbit:
A small mechanical ark was waiting for orders.
Mechanical ark, Calvin actually did not understand this term, so he could not talk about any intuitive feelings. But after following Constantine back to orbit later, Calvin looked at the irregular space city with a diameter of more than 30 kilometers in front of him from the perspective of the transport ship, and asked Constantine in surprise: "Is this the "small" mechanical ark you mentioned?"
"Yes, it is indeed small..."
Compared with Calvin's surprise, Constantine seemed much calmer.
This is the cognitive difference caused by the isolation of the priests of the Mechanicus from the outside world. Calvin would misunderstand the size of the mechanical ark, which he thought was reasonable.
Unlike ordinary Imperial Navy warships and the battle barges of the Astartes monks, the warships of the Mechanicus rarely appear on the front line of the Empire and the aliens and chaos.
As one of the poles of the Empire's double-headed eagle, their core value has always been the weapons and equipment support for the Empire's armed sequence, as well as the technical support for some planetary worlds conquered by the Empire in the early stage of colonization.
These "technical geeks" in the eyes of other forces in the Empire, except for very few exploration trips, are almost never seen in the various territories of the Empire.
But this is definitely a wrong perception.
In fact, these "technical geeks" of the Mechanicus have no shortage of reasons to go out. Whether it is the research of alien technology or the recovery of a lost STC, or even the research of special "special cosmic physical phenomena" in certain areas, they are willing to spend time and money on it.
The reason why it is not known is that these studies are too dangerous in most cases. The mechanical priests who jump back and forth between aliens and heretics will naturally avoid the eyes of other departments of the empire.
Their true attitude towards the laws of the empire is far less respectful than they appear.
There is no need to mention this point. It can be seen from the elite servitors of unknown origin in the Martian Skitarians. (It is rumored that an Astartes who disappeared on the battlefield was found in the army of transformed servitors.)
And what matches their low-key but frequent needs to go out is that they correspond to warships of various levels of the Imperial Navy from childhood to adulthood.
Anyway, the construction technology of the Imperial warships is in their hands: they have everything that the Navy has, and they also have what the Navy does not have.
In the eyes of these technical geeks who are good at technology, use productivity as a weapon, and turn around to explode troops at the slightest disagreement, there is no mobile interstellar factory more suitable for their travel mothership than the Mechanical Ark.
Yes, the Mechanical Ark. As the name suggests, it is first of all a large factory that carries most of the technical production capabilities of the sages of the Mechanicus, carrying the ability and hope of theoretically building a world system alone. Then, it functions as a warship.
This large ship has no unified specifications or standards. They vary in size according to the different backgrounds of their respective worlds.
From the famous "Hope", a giant that covers the sky on a continental plate, to the 30-kilometer-long "pocket-sized ark" in front of Calvin, they are all within the scope of the interpretation of the term "Mechanical Ark".
But there is one thing, no matter how small the ark is, it is still an ark.
The industrial system carried on it has at least more than one category and a complete system: from ore processing to smelting and casting; from energy collection to refining and recycling.
Complete self-circulation, and become a temporary war engine when necessary; under the condition of sufficient resources, supply at least the medium- and long-term war materials needed for a galaxy, which is the minimum standard of a mechanical ark, and also the true face of the space city in front of Calvin.
"What is its name?" Calvin understood the true meaning of this behemoth that was not directly used as a weapon after Constantine's explanation.
The mechanical city was brightly lit against the black background of the universe.
Across the cold and dark space, Calvin could not hear the never-sleeping hammering sound of the forge and smelter, but just the smoke and dust discharged from those towering exhaust pipes made him happily experience the vigorous life force in the city.
That is the power of industry, that is the power of civilization.
With it, Calvin can get the planet under his feet out of ignorance; with it, all the plans in Calvin's mind become possible.
This is the last possession of the priests in the Omen Order after they became independent from Mars with the support of the Emperor. It is also the biggest surprise that Constantine brought to Calvin after his return this time.
He turned around excitedly to thank Constantine beside him, and asked him the name of the city again. "What is it called?"
"San Cristo." Constantine responded with a hint of meaning.
PS: Cristo means a pure person, but the abbreviation Chris in life has the meaning of "savior" and "patron saint" in Christianity.
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