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The tech-priestess’ servos tell her you’re approaching before you even round the corner. Her floating skulls chitter around you, the glowing blue lenses where their eyes used to be no doubt transmitting your entire purchase history aboard the Mourningstar to her, including the new uniform you’d just spent far too many aquilas on at Hallowette’s. They rush back to her side, making themselves busy at her Shrine to the Omnissiah, the Machine God you’ve never really had the time nor the education to understand.
You come to her the same way every operative does — weapon in hand, a question in your eyes that you’ve not quite figured out how to ask. She knows what you want before you get the chance to speak. Hadron keeps you waiting at the counter for as long she deems necessary to remind you that she holds ultimate authority in this part of the ship, before sauntering towards you with a still unexpected lightness. You couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess at what her chassis is made of, to be so light, where your slightest step makes the grated metal floor beneath you creak and groan.
Her green optic lenses are still unsettling when she looks at you, though you could swear they twitch with a smirk. “I am… prepared,” she starts, even her voice mechanised through a vox speaker, “to offer artificer’s services, varlet. Provided you remain civil.”
It’s difficult to look at her, but it’s equally challenging to look away. She’s perversely built, with finely crafted wiring and synthetics that meld with the flesh where her face should have been, and her remarkably human hand that you have no doubt is full of veins that pump oil and lubricant instead of blood. You can’t quite help but wonder if it’s ever touched something that isn’t made of metal.
It’s much easier to keep your eyes on your weapon, so you do. The gun itself is nothing too special, at least to you — your trusty, not-so-little Spearhead boltgun, the one thing you’re certain keeps your arms thick enough to fill out your uniform and wrecks your shoulders enough to promise as much of an early discharge as you’d be allowed. She probably sees a lot of them, with all the old soldiers running around the ship these days. You set it down in front of her as gently as you can, and it still lands on the counter with a heavy thud that would make you cringe if you weren’t so determined to keep a straight face.
The mechanical fingers at the end of her other arm lift it with unfair ease, and she looks at you again. Now, she asks you the unspoken question: What do you want me to do with this? You clear your throat and stand up a little taller. “I would like it consecrated, tech-priest,” comes your practiced response, almost as self-assured as you imagined. Spitting out her title at the end of the sentence like a piece of gristle in your rations, however, less so.
Much less.
She simulates clicking her tongue before turning away, breaking your view of the bolter that was acting as your lifeline in this exchange, but only after making you watch her human hand wrap around the magazine and unload it. She’s reminded you of this before — it’s the machine she blesses in the Emperor’s name, not the ammunition. You take it back when she moves away. Throne knows how she’d react if you touched her, even accidentally, and it’s not something you see yourself being particularly eager to find out.
Hadron does… something… but the heavy gun sits like a feather in her arms. Watching her work is the best part. Her fingers, both mechanical and not, move with a deftness you’ve only ever seen in a ratling with a penchant for other people’s pocket change, and it strikes you for the dozenth time that she’s probably so familiar with every type of weapon on the ship that she could do this with her optics malfunctioning — not that she’d ever let them, of course, but the point stands.
You can pretend, with the other operatives, and especially with the ogryn, that you know what she’s doing. Cleaning it, cleansing it, asking Holy Mars to make your bolts strike true, but you know you’ll never really understand. All this faith, the practice of actively being the Emperor’s humble servant, the instrument of His holy will, is above you. Deep down and on the surface you know that you’re just another soldier, acting on His behalf because someone definitely holier than thou gave the order to. You leave the praying to the professionals, and the attention-seeking rejects with the flamers adorned with charms.
Her vox-voice tears you from your thoughts before you can get too heretical. “It is done,” she says simply, and if it had been anyone else she might’ve smiled, silently placing the bolter before you. As much as you respect Hadron’s expertise, her ability to outperform you in the highly competitive sport of ‘putting your gun down quietly’ irks you in some way. It puts you off of thanking her.
She stays at the counter, and a servo-skull floats by carrying a list of traits she can bless your weapon with. It opens its jaw, letting the slip fall from its mouth to land perfectly in between you and its master before leaving with a soft whirr. This list grows longer by the cycle, it seems. Dozens upon dozens of blessings, as the others call them, begin blurring into each other, and your thoughts muddle. Damn it. You clear your throat again and pray that you don’t stutter before asking her an unpracticed question. “What do you recommend?” Wow. Maybe you should start looking into this faith business.
Hadron’s head quirks to the side by half a degree, not enough for anyone not immediately in front of her to notice, but you do. She didn’t expect this, either. The varlets tend to leave her rather quickly after the consecration — she likes it that way, brief and to the point, when they know what they want. The inefficiency of the new recruits not knowing what to do bores her, but it’s strange to hear someone of your standing ask such a question. You can hear her servos kicking into gear as she thinks of a response.
“This weapon is slow,” she answers after a moment. You think you could’ve guessed that, but you decide to keep it to yourself and let her speak instead. “You say as much on your operation frequencies. I am surprised you have not taken any measures to increase the reload efficiency.”
That’s as good of an answer as you could expect. You nod once, and she must be doing something more than just waving her hands over it, but you can’t really tell, and it’s over as soon as it’s begun. She pushes the gun towards you with her mechanical hand, and it only begins to scrape along the counter when it’s on the side closest to you. The servo-skulls bob up and down in the corner of your eye at the unexpected noise.
You take the hefty thing in your hands, relishing the feeling of cold steel against your warm flesh and trying not to let your imagination reference it as inspiration when thinking about the tech-priestess. You offer her a smile nonetheless, brief and self-contained, as you set the bolter back into its gargantuan holster on your sling. “Thank you, Hadron,” comes off of your clearly undisciplined tongue before you can stop it. Her head moves imperceptibly again, bowing in recognition of your words. You wonder how many people aboard the Mourningstar actually take the time to make such a silly remark until you remember that she’s still looking at you.
The ordo dockets she’s waiting for jingle in your pocket and you make a very good attempt at not looking like you’d forgotten how these transactions end. Blessing such a machine takes a not insignificant chunk of your hard earned payments, and she holds out her flesh hand while watching you delve into your pockets to pay her. She doesn’t need to rattle off how much you owe — the weight of it in her palm, you imagine, allows her to calculate it immediately.
So you give, and you keep giving, and when she finally closes her palm you feel the slightest electric pulse of her fingers brushing against yours, and it takes all of your willpower to keep from jumping back. Hadron doesn’t say anything, she doesn’t do anything, and you don’t either. With a final nod in her direction, you take your leave before your face begins to flush and begin the long, stomping walk back down to your bunk.
At least her fingers were warm.