Editing The Radical Inquisitor (section)

== Chapter 2 ==

Dres used the las-cutter to break off more of the rock surface of the object, exposing the metallic skin beneath. When he finished on that section of the stone layer, he retracted the tool from his servo-arm, and instead brought out the heavy claw that formed the majority of the augment attached to his right shoulder blade. ''Sometimes, a bit of bluntness is required to go further,'' he thought as he used the heavy piston driven manipulator to tear off a chunk of the tough rock. A piston driven hammer then came out, shattering more of the rocky surface with each blow. The dozen mechadendrites he had coming off of his body worked tirelessly, collecting the fragments of the rock, and placing them into the bucket next to him, awaiting analysis.

On the other side of the rock, his sister worked. She was using her own augmentations to break into rock as well, though she was using her own melta attachments to liquefy the rock, having discovered that the metal beneath was extremely heat resistant, so she didn't need to worry. Her pair of smaller servo-arm came to the surface of the rock, using their small but powerful piston-driven claws to tear off the soft rock, letting it drop hissing onto the floor. Her own mechadendrites waited for the rock to cool before prying it off and dropping it into her own bucket, also awaiting analysis.

"It appears to be competely coated in a foot-thick layer of the mineral deposit, which from my knowledge seem to be a mixture of space dust and rock fused together," mused Dres, his modified vocal cords adding a mechanical tone to his voice, though the sound of his deep voice was still audible alongside the metallic sound he produced when he spoke.

"Indeed," replied Yret, his sister and twin. "The deposit of mineral on the surface of the object is simply normal space debris," she agreed. "But the object underneath is highly resistant to heat and energy - when I've accidentally scraped against the surface of the object with my claw-augments, the metal has remained unscathed. My melta attachment is easily capable of removing the rock, yet it doesn't seem to be affecting the metal underneath." Her own voice was also modified, and it had a more tinny sound to it, but also contained the sound of a very much human voice. It was one of the various reasons as to why they were outcasts from the general tech-priesthood; they believed that they should always keep themselves somewhat human, as how could they benefit humanity if they were no longer human?

"Curious," Dres responded. He stopped working, making his huge servo-arm close up like a flower with its extra attachments to aid him in his duties, and using his mechadendrites, moved his bucket of the rock shards. At the same time, he let out a screech of binary, ordering a pair of servitors nearby to continue breaking off the deposit built over the object of interest. They lumbered over, and started to work, using las-cutters and claws to smash up the rocky surface, littering the nearby ground of the twins workshop onboard the ''Vox Luna'' with shards of detritus. Yret then also let out a screech in binary, and half a dozen small child-servitors scurried over on legs or tracks, and began to quickly collect all of the shards before depositing them in the bucket next to the rock.

Dres, meanwhile, had began to process the rock shards, separating each of the individual minerals and compounds present in the shards to work out what they were made of. He worked quickly, like any tech-priest should, placing the shards into the equipment before him, a kind of miniaturised refinery - it may not have produced a usable amount of materials or resources, but it served the twins well in their duties. He watched with his half dozen camera-lens eyes and his one organic eye as figures and numbers started to fill up the screen before him. While the initial scans of the object gave a basic idea of what made up the rock surface, physically breaking up the shards at the molecular level gave the most accurate results.

"Hmm. It appears, sister, that our assumption was correct: the rock is a combination of different minerals, metals, alloys and non-metals, all of them common in dust and detritus found in the void. There is nothing overly strange about any of it, save that the compounds and minerals were fused together from some kind of intense heat and pressure."

Yret also stopped working, and ordered more servitors to continue working on the rocky object. She took her own bucket of shards to her brother, still going through the reams of information being produced by the machine in front of him. When she had done that, she walked over to another of the many pieces of machinery in their workshop - a large, boxy object with a large panel covered in buttons and levers, while a large mechanical arm, ending with a large, narrowing barrel, hung folded up on the side of the boxy technology. She went over to the panel, and using her two pairs of hands (one with 6 fingers, the other with 7) and a few of her mechadendrites, she started rapidly tapping the keys across the panel, turning the machine on and priming it for use. The machine spirit of the machine was dozy, and she felt that it was almost stretching in its own way - Pistons extended and retracted slightly, power coils charged up and then released their stored energy, and other small actions that caused Yret to smile slightly.

She continued to wake up the large plasma-torch, priming it for use to help in the work cleaning off the object, and then to maybe try and cut into the metallic surface of the thing, opening it up for inspection from their eyes, fingers and augmentations.

They both heard the beep and then grating noise as the heavy steel doors opened up to allow Inquisitor Quintus entry into their workshop. The room was the size of a hall - they had modified it themselves to accommodate the large pieces of machinery and equipment they had in the room. The smallest pieces of equipment were indivual, specialized tools, such as handheld plasma-torches or manual wrenches; the largest piece of equipment was an enormous thing of metal, cabling and panels, which sat near one side of the room. The twin Magos had built up walkways, platforms, stairs and ladders around it, to aid in its construction. They had been making it for many years know, every so often working on it when they were not immediately needed by Quintus.

"Inquisitor," they both said at the same time.

"Magi," Quintus responded, smiling at the twins. Though he hardly ever saw their faces (due to the black robes with the rust red stripe down the back they wore), he knew about their deviant beliefs from the rest of the Cult Mechanicus. Their personal ideas he preferred - he'd rather have people in touch with their humanity than people made of metal and wiring. "How goes the examination of the object?"

"Fine, my lord," said Yret, her mechadendrites coiling up and flexing as she spoke. They then told Quintus what they had gathered in respect to the deposits on the surface of the object and to the object itself. They explained in turns, each of the, continuing to work while they explained to the Inquisitor the information they currently had.

"May I ask what that is?" Quintus asked, gesturing to the machine Yret was currently priming for use.

"A plasma-torch, my lord," she responded. "There are others elsewhere in the workshop, but one is suitable enough to clean the object of its rock deposits; we'll get the others working to speed things up. I'll activate the others once this one is functioning. Hopefully, the torches should be capable of cutting open the metallic layers of the object, and expose the inner workings of the object - if it's a machine. Otherwise, we'll see the innards of whatever it is."

"Good. How long do you think you'll need to crack it open?" Quintus asked, eyebrow raised.

"Depends." Responded Dres, not looking up from his current work of extracting a second plasma-torch, this one loaded onto a small tracked unit, with cables coiled up onto a hook on the side of the main body of the machine. "If the servitors work non-stop, and the plasma-torches work as well, it should be completely cleaned of the rock deposits within 24 hours. The object itself, however, is more tricky. If there is no way to open it with conventional means (unlocking a door, inputting a code, etc.) then we will have to cut it open. Either way will take uncertain amounts of time - it may need a ridiculously long code to unlock, and the substance it is made of could take a long time for the plasma torches to cut. The best estimation, is approximately a week - but it could be a few days to months. We agreed to work on it non-stop, with at least one of us working on it while the other rests."

"Well, the journey we are taking will most likely last a few weeks to a month - given your estimation, the object should be opened before we arrive. Let's hope that is the case. Thank you, Magi, your service is greatly appreciated."

"You are very much welcome, Inquisitor," they both said, finally raising their heads, and giving Quintus the first glimpse of their faces that day. The top-right half of Dres's face was made up of metal and bionics - in place of his right eye, he had 6 camera lenses of different sizes, and the surrounding area of his skull was replaced with metal and components. Yret's face had the left side of her chin,  mouth, cheek, and side of her head replaced with bionics, which extended across her scalp. The parts of her bionics which moved (such as the mouth and cheeks) were made up of dozens of tiny sections and pieces of metal, all connected and wired so that it created a metallic version of an ordinary human face, perfectly matching the opposite side of her face.

With a smile, Quintus left the two tech-priests alone to their work, exiting through the heavy blast doors which closed behind him, giving the two Magi the quiet they needed to keep working in peace.

Dres looked over to his sister. "Shall we continue, Yret?" he asked.

"Of course, Dres," replied Yret, with a half-mechanical smile. Then, they turned their full attention to their work, the servitors having broken off more of the tough rocky surface of the object.

----

The plasma-torches had finished burning off the rocks, the last charred fragments falling to the decking where the child-servitors picked up the red hot shards of minerals, continuing with their work despite the little flesh they had left on their hands burning away.

Now, Yret and Dres got the four plasma-torches that were activated and punched in the commands which would make them cut into the metallic surface of the object, slowly cutting out grooves in the tough surface. With all of the rock removed from the metal beneath, the object was revealed; a perfect sphere (they had checked, it was quite literally a flawless sphere) made of a single section of the ridiculously dense metal. With no obvious access, the Magi had searched for possible openings with their equipment - there was no entryway or access port, just a perfect, unending layer of metal. Seeing this, they had prepared the other plasma-torches while the currently active ones worked non-stop at the metal sphere.

Now, four days later, they had made decent progress; the torches working non-stop had rewarded the Magi with the very real possibility of opening the thing up. Each of the four grooves measured from the top of the sphere to around a quarter of the way down, each torch cutting a path from top to bottom down the sides of the sphere. Dres and Yret had done tests on the unknown metal and found that it was magnetic - this could have attracted the debris, which was then fused to the object through some way involving a great deal of heat and pressure. The discovery that it was magnetic gave them the idea however, that once the grooves were completed, they could maybe pull the sections of metal off with the powerful mag-claw they had somewhere in their workshop, and if they were connected on the inside, well, they would carefully cut away with tiny tools, atom by atom, until it was exposed to them; the two Magi were patient, determined and focused - they were prepared to do a lot of work to achieve a goal. They get the object open, no matter how long it took.

"Yret, take a look at this," said Dres, gesturing for her to come to him, who was standing by a large piece of equipment on a stand, a panel with a cable coiling out of one side, draping out of one side of the module. The other end of the cable was attached to a handheld sensor, which Dres was holding by the sphere, which now had the grooves reaching to a third of the way down the sides of the metal surface.

The panel of the machine was covered in screens and dials. One particular set was going crazy, flashing and spiking all over the place, figures in glowing red where everywhere else was a content, healthy green.

"There is some kind of radiation being given off by the object, and it is gradually increasing," Dres said, passing the handheld sensor over the object and observing it spike over the cuts made by the plasma-cutters.

"What kind of radiation?" Yret asked, peering over the machine herself, and noticed how the metallic surface was worn and corroded, with only the dials and screens readable.

"I don't know," he said, with a rather annoyed note in his voice. "It's an old machine - there are so many readouts with no labels, I can't make sense of any of it. All I know, is that there are high levels of some kind of radiation being given off by the machine, and I don't know what of."

Yret thought for a moment, then said "We keep working - we told Quintus we'd crack this thing open, and we will. We owe him that." 

Dres smiled p, and then said "Quintus did save our rears back when we were on that forge world."

They remembered when they had first met Quintus - they were locked up in some cell in the crust of the planet, far below where even the press ganged workers went, kept in complete darkness with their few bionics then disabled or when possible, removed. They had stated their belief that the technology available to the Imperium could be improved greatly, and that by innovating and adapting their technology mankinds inherent right of the Galaxy would become true. They were branded as hereteks and thrown in their cell, away from the eyes of the holy techpriests. Their cell door opened, and a few Skitarii ape tired, along with a man with rust coloured skin and hair, who was taking them away for execution on some faraway planet. She smiled when she remembered that to the Adeptus Mechanicus, they were both dead. It was quite amusing really - Quintus had taken them away from harm and the Mechanicus never realised.

She walked towards the Vox unit set into the wall of the room, readying to inform Quintus of the news of the object.