Mechanicum

Whichever it was, it marked the end of a lean patch for Quinux Fortran.

He slid the auspex into a zipped pocket in his robes and slung his rifle as he approached the dune, clambering up on all fours as the sand spilled away beneath him. Climbing the dune was hard work and he sweated profusely in the dry heat.

Quinux reached the top of the dune and began clearing away the sand with a collapsible shovel from his pack. With quick, economical strokes he dug down into the sand, widening and deepening the hole as he went.

Pausing only to take regular sips of brackish water from his hide canteen, Quinux gradually cleared the top of the dune. The wind attempted to thwart his labours, blowing fresh sand and ash back into the hole, but after an hour of digging, his shovel struck metal and he gave a grunt of pleasure.

'Right, let's see what you are then,' he said, dropping the shovel and sweeping his gloved hands over the find.

It was metal sure enough, fresh and untainted by corrosion or rust. The surface patina was blackened, as though it had been scorched by intense heat, but as he scraped the edge of his shovel across it, he could see that the damage was only superficial.

He cleared more sand away, guessing that the main body of whatever lay beneath him was roughly spherical from the curve of the exposed metal. More shovelfuls were scooped from the ground, and Quinux frowned as he saw the outline of what looked like some kind of battle robot emerge.

Three blisters of metal faced him, like sensor domes, but devoid of life.

'Now what in the name of the Omnissiah would you be doin' out here?'

The auspex chimed. Loud. A strong signal.

Puzzled, Quinux dug the device from his robes and looked around him for the source.

He could hear the roar of engines above the howl of the wind, but couldn't pinpoint its source. Quickly he swept up his rifle, ready to defend his find, but there was nothing to see.

A harsh beam of light stabbed from the sky above him and Quinux shielded his eyes as the roaring engine noise leapt in volume. The down-draught of a flyer's powerful jets blew up a storm of smoke and dust.

He couldn't see anything through the whipping ash, but kept his rifle pulled hard into his shoulder. The pitch of the engines changed from a howl to a whine as the craft descended, and moments later the stablight was replaced with the diffuse glow of landing lights.

As the dust settled, Quinux looked up and saw a group of people marching towards him from the belly of a heavy lifter, an aircraft capable of transporting enormous items of machinery in its hold.

The dust blurred the newcomers' forms, but whoever they were they weren't getting a piece of this mother-lode.

'This here's mine!' he shouted, jerking the barrel of his rifle towards the dune. 'I found it and you ain't gonna take it off me. I got salvage rights.'

The figures stepped into view, and Quinux's heart sank as he saw a host of brutal-looking, body-armoured Skitarii led by a robed adept of the Mechanicum. The adept was swathed in thick red robes and augmented with a multitude of glowing green cybernetics on snaking manipulators. He wore an iron mask with glowing red eyes and a huge mechanised device hunched at his shoulders.

'Actually you don't,' said the adept, one of his green-lit manip arms aiming at the machine beneath the sand. 'That machine belongs to me.'

'And who the hell are you?'

'I am Master-Adept Lukas Chrom.'

'Never heard of you,' said Quinux.

The light at the end of Chrom's manip arm flashed and he said, 'Come. I am here to take you back to Mondus Gamma.'

'I aint' goin' nowhere with you,' snapped Quinux.

'I was not talking to you,' said Chrom. 'I was talking to the Kaban Machine.'

The sand beneath Quinux trembled, and he looked down in alarm as the sensor blisters he had uncovered lit up with a yellow glow. A tremble of power vibrated through the machine as its dormant power cells came back online and returned it to life.

It lurched forward, and Quinux lost his balance, sliding end over end down the shifting sand and losing his grip on his rifle. He fell to the ground and rolled onto his back as the awakened machine emerged from its concealment.

Nearly ten metres tall, its mass was roughly spherical with two heavily weaponised arms attached on opposite sides. Behind high pauldrons to protect its sensor apparatus, a number of metallic arms extended from its shoulders, like massively thick mechadendrites equipped with a variety of lethal looking weapons.

The machine sat immobile for a few moments before training its weapons on his bulk-hauler.

'No!' shouted Quinux, rising to his feet and scrambling towards the adept. His cry of protest was drowned out in a blaze of gunfire as sheeting hails of light blasted from the Kaban Machine's weapons.

Quinux's vehicle exploded in a smoky orange fireball, the over-pressure of the blast swatting him to the ground. He gasped acrid, toxin-laden air and realised that the explosion had torn the breathing apparatus from his face.