Author's Note: For those interested, there are now eight advance chapters on P-atreon (remove the spaces and dash): p-atreon/ SkySage24.
It was almost time. After a year of waiting, of being forced to suffer indignity and oppression, the opportunity they had been waiting for was here.
They had plotted their revolt carefully.
Over the course of several months, they had covertly sought out like-minded thinkers, building alliances and preparing.
To go against the mandates of Olympus Mons should have been unthinkable in ordinary times, but these were not ordinary times.
The Fabricator-General had been executed - murdered - by a barbarian warlord from Terra who dared to proclaim himself the Omnissiah. In front of the entire assembly, the rightful lord of Mars had been incinerated by a foreigner who demanded their loyalty.
All the claims about the Fabricator-General dabbling with heretical tech and warp entities were obviously nonsense. Clearly, negotiations between the Fabricator-General and the warlord had broken down. Then the warlord had broken Holy Olympus, the heart of Mars, with his foul sorcery and framed the Fabricator-General for it.
Kane, the Fabricator-Locum, was clearly a traitor. He had sold out to a foreign power in exchange for being named Fabricator-General of Mars. Even if the matter had not yet been formalized, Kane now ruled as Master of Olympus Mons, acting as the voice of the so-called Emperor. It was obviously just a matter of time before Kane was granted the title in truth.
Everyone knew of the witch-kings of Terra and their dabbling with the Warp, the stories of their hubris and horrors having spread far and wide across all of Sol, from the cloud cities of Venus to the rings of distant Saturn.
It was clear that the primitive who called himself the Emperor had done what a hundred warlords before him had done, and used those dark forces against Mars. He was more successful than his predecessors, true. But it was only a matter of time before the sorcery he dabbled in backfired on him.
That was what happened to all those who dared to drink too deeply of the poisoned well that was the Warp.
What was most outrageous was that so many of their colleagues believed him! They had accepted the Emperor's words instead of seeing the obvious truth. They acknowledged his claim as the Omnissiah and had bent the knee to this pretender who claimed to be their god.
It could not be borne. It would not be borne.
But the power of the pretender was undeniable, as was his hold on many of the Martian conclaves. Not to mention the ruin that had been wrought on Mars by the Emperor's witchcraft. So they had to act slowly, and carefully.
Secret coded messages were exchanged, and the damage was repaired and rebuilt. The true sons and daughters of Mars gritted their teeth and bowed their heads to the pretender, no matter how much it hurt.
They replenished their forces, rebuilt their temples and waited for the right opportunity to strike.
So what if their numbers wavered as the Pretender shared secrets of ancient technology, and decoded ancient mysteries that had baffled the greatest minds of the Mechanicum for centuries? Those who would be tempted away by his poisoned gifts, his bribes, were fools. They were weak-willed and unable to commit to what needed to be done to keep Mars free and secure.
The true adherents of the Machine God would emerge victorious in the end, no matter what.
And when the Pretender was dead and his empire shattered, all of Mars would know their glory and righteousness.
And eventually, the moment came. A year after the death of Kelbor-Hal, the Pretender brought over the ancient warship, the Bucephalus, to Mars. How it burned to see such a marvel in the hands of a barbarian, who had allowed those idiot savages called the Terrawatt Clan to tamper with it. Who knows what damage they had done in their so-called restoration efforts? What secrets had been lost due to their carelessness and stupidity?
But it provided a ripe opportunity. After a year, the Emperor and the traitors finally hashed out a so-called Treaty to bind Mars to his petty Imperium. On Bucephalus, the Emperor and the entire Martian Assembly would finally sign the Treaty and a new Fabricator-General would be named at last.
(As if the Pretender had any right to name a Fabricator-General.)
It would be the perfect opportunity to kill the Emperor and the traitors in one stroke and reclaim control of Mars.
And in his foolishness, the Emperor had even given them access to the systems of the Bucephalus. A gesture of goodwill he called it, to let them study it.
An opening to slide in their commands into the Bucephalus's programs, and convince the Machine Spirit within to side with them.
The preparations had all been made.
Nothing could go wrong.
"How much longer do you plan to maintain this little charade?" Isha asked, sipping from a glass of sparkling silver wine.
The Emperor knew how to throw a party, she had to admit.
The Bucephalus had a grand ballroom, illuminated by crystal chandeliers on the roof. The floor was polished marble, and the walls were gold of course. What else?
A grand banquet had been laid out on a series of tables, with the most decadent food that the finest chefs in the Imperium could make. The centrepiece of the feast was a great roast boar, genetically engineered to be as large as one of the Emperor's Custodes which had been roasted brown and marinated in rich red wine.
Accompanying it were various meat dishes, from chickens to fish, sourced from both Terra and the newly terraformed Luna, quite literally tons of fried salmon and trout fillet available for people to forge themselves on. There were chocolate sculptures in the shape and size of lions, tigers and many other beasts besides. Golden platters of the many fruits Isha had produced for the Imperium were everywhere, a not-so-subtle boast that even these miracles of medicine that awed the Biologis were available to the Imperium in droves.
Upon a raised circular stage in the centre of the hall, there was an orchestra playing music, and on the dance floor, the highest aristocrats of the Imperium gathered to talk, plot, scheme and jockey for influence. They were fat and rich, wearing false smiles and clothing and jewels so utterly ostentatious that it might even have raised the eyebrow of Eldar oligarchs from before the Fall.
The Tech-Priests of the Mechanicum seemed distinctly uncomfortable and out of place with their red robes and mechanical augmentations, clearly not used to the kind of parties that Terra aristocrats enjoyed. Not that the Tech-Priests themselves never indulged, but the forms their extravagance and decadence tended to take were not the same as the Terran kind.
Which, Isha supposed, was the point. To demonstrate the wealth and power of Terra, and to make it clear to Mars that they would have to play by the Imperium's rules from now on.
She couldn't say she felt particularly sorry for them, however.
In response to her question, the Emperor shrugged carelessly. No one except her would have seen it through his aura, of course, but it was what it was.
"Not much longer," He said. "The insurgents are almost ready to make their move. Once they do, we can drop the charade and strike back."
Isha took another sip of her wine. The taste washed over her tongue as she identified the various elements and felt its history. It was a combination of various toxins and stimulants, combined to create a cocktail that could quite literally knock someone without gene augmentations dead. It had been concocted by various scientists in service to the Terran nobility, specifically those of Albia. They were descended from augmented soldiers created during Terra's Golden Age, and while their abilities were diminished compared to those of their ancestors, ordinary alcohol still did not affect them much.
Isha couldn't say she cared for it. It reeked of overcompensation.
"I certainly hope so," She responded to the Emperor, abandoning the glass on a nearby table. "This grows tiresome."
Though she had consented to wear a flowing deep blue dress that left one shoulder bare and several Terran jewels for the night, Isha could not say she was in much of a mood for a party.
She had held herself back for a year now, accepting the Emperor's request that she wait until all the problematic elements of Mars coalesced into a single faction which could be shattered with one decisive blow.
It was, she conceded, a clever strategy.
But Isha still itched to finally cut loose and free the servitors, to punish the Martian tech priests for the atrocities against life they had committed and continued to commit.
(Every time she saw the servitor, it set her teeth on edge. It reminded her far too much of the Yngir and their soulless Necron legions.
More than once, she had to wonder to herself how much influence the Dragon had on the Mechanicum's doctrines. The similarities were beyond unnerving, and surely it could not be a mere coincidence.
But in the end, there was nothing more to be done about it. She had tightened the Dragon's bonds as much as she could.)
Tonight was the night, and now that they were so close, the waiting was almost unbearable.
The lustful and envious looks that many of the Terran aristocrats cast towards her only irritated her more. Not to mention the fear and mistrust, of course, which had been present ever since it had come out that the Emperor was employing an alien as one of his advisors.
"Be patient," The Emperor told her, sipping much more sedately from his glass of wine, though in the hands of anyone else, it would have been more appropriately described as a multi-gallon jug of glass. "It's almost time."
She had almost expected him to wear either his armour or an Imperial dress uniform for the occasion, but instead, the Emperor had dressed in shimmering robes of golden silk, with rubies sewn into the hem and neckline. A golden band with a black diamond embedded in it gleamed upon the ring finger of his right hand. The only element of his usual dress was the laurels adorning his head.
"I am being very patient," Isha retorted. "Especially considering I'm tolerating the boorish behaviour of your vassals."
The Emperor's lips twisted downwards. "Have they been bothering you again?"
Ever since the conquest of Mars last year, covering up Isha's status as an alien had not been viable. So the Emperor had finally made it public during the last campaigns on Terra, where she had helped shatter the Ethnarchy, the Emperor's final opponents.
That and the explanation that Panacea Fruit and the end of hunger in the Imperium were her work (even if the Emperor had told people that it was a result of their collaboration on bioengineering) had certainly bought her goodwill among the Terran populace.
But the Terran nobility was a paranoid, xenophobic and incestuous lot who regarded her with equal parts greed, fear and hate.
She had been treated with barely veiled contempt and also received offers to entice her into betraying the Emperor.
As if a bunch of petty nobles whose domains didn't even cover a single planet had anything she wanted.
Those offers had died down when she had promptly turned over those who had made them to the Emperor, but it had also bred a certain resentment and jealousy among the nobility.
It was quite insufferable.
"Oh just the usual," Isha said. "The veiled insults, the sneers, the implications that I am inferior for being a filthy Xenos," The last words were said in a sarcastic tone.
The Emperor scowled. "I'll deal with it," He promised curtly.
Someone else might have objected to the idea that they needed the Emperor to shield them from something as petty as harsh words.
But Isha couldn't be bothered to be so proud. What would be the point? The Terran nobility was beyond irritating, and she couldn't reprimand them without overstepping her agreement with the Emperor that humans were his and the Eldar were hers unless one of them expressly said otherwise.
So she simply nodded.
In any case, she'd have a far more appropriate target to vent her annoyance on soon enough.
Soon.