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"Hey, what are you working on now, Master?" Apprentice Andrim's high, over-eager voice pierced the gloom of the nearly-silent shop.

Darhol twitched. He had been using one of his auxiliary arms to turn a cogwheel in this holy yet wretched mechanism, and his involuntary movement allowed the springs in the thing to do their work despite his augmented strength. A piston shot into the air and bounced off the ceiling. It would probably have to be repaired.

The techpriest initiate bounding into the room picked up the part, brushed it off and set it back on Darhol's bench. "Hey, it looks like some kind of gun. Recovered, is it?"

With a grumble, the older techpriest nodded. "Magos-Explorator Ryth found it on Wray 2 in what he thought was a wrecked aircraft hangar. You can look him up in the archives." Andrim turned away, headed to the Librarium access terminal in the corner, when something gripped his ankle tightly. It tripped him, and then flipped him over. The initiate stared into the face of his superior, which was twisting in annoyance and scorn.

"And, Andrim," murmured Darhol, retracting the gripper that had stopped the younger man, "I've spoken to you before about charging in here while I'm working. Do that again and I will have your brain for my desktop cogitator - after I break your arms and legs. Do I make myself clear?"

Andrim blinked his pale eyes, licked his lips. "What?"

"What planet are you from, son?"

"What?"

"I've never heard of 'What'. Do they speak Gothic on What?"

"What?"

Darhol swung a manipulator back out over his apprentice's body. "Gothic, incestual fornicator. Do you speak it?"

"What?"

"Say 'what'... say 'what' again. I challenge you. Do you dare?"

"No!"

"I asked you a question. Do you understand?"

"What?"

Darhol brought the manipulator down hard on the young Techpriest's shoulder. There was a crunch as bone and gristle gave way, and the initiate screamed.

"I asked you a question, idiot. Do you understand what I have told you?"

"Yes! Yes, I do!" Andrim was vibrating in terror now.

"Good! Now get out of my sight!" Darhol pointed at the door, and Andrim picked himself up and fled back through it.

What nonsense, thought the techpriest. Initiates these days didn't have half the sense that he and his peers had, when they went through their apprenticeships. And the Eternal Spirit knew that he, as bitter as he was, was not nearly as cruel as others were to the initiates in their training.

Darhol returned to his workbench and picked up the piston with an auxiliary claw, dusting it off reverently with his fingers. He peered at it, and with a mere thought the scanners built into his right eye gave him the knowledge that the piston's surface was unharmed and its curvature was true. What a relief that was.

It took him the use of both hands and three of the mechanical arms attached to his body to put the receiver of this strange weapon back together. It was clear that it was not meant to be serviced by unaided human hands, not with springs that powerful or machining that fine. It was strange, but if the notes that Magos Ryth had recorded were correct (praise be unto that worthy individual, now in full communion the Machine Spirit), this device predated the Dark Age of Technology. If Ryth had correctly transcribed the markings on the side of the box this weapon had been found in, it was designed for a shell that no manufactorium still produced. Ryth had calculated (and Darhol had checked, and had made Andrim check as well) that while the bore was equivalent in diameter, the shells would have been fired with much greater velocity than those from most Imperial autocannon, by almost an order of magnitude. It was a wondrous thing, but made wretched by the knowledge that it might not be used on the battlefield even in his lifetime. It took that long for the necessary omens and auguries to be observed, to see if the Machine Spirit approved of this technology, and if It did, to build or retool manufactoria to produce the weapon and its peculiar ammunition.

The other thing about the ammunition... Ryth had recovered a handful of cartridges that appeared to fit the strange weapon's breech dimensions. They had long since decayed, but they appeared to have been made of a very heavy yet unstable metal. Records unearthed from the most ancient of ancient databases suggested that the process of manufacturing certain ancient weapons had produced this material as a waste product, and that a clever techpriest of that day found a use for it. Neither Darhol personally nor this whole research institution had any of it in stock, though.

Sighing to himself, Darhol tapped his old and slow desktop cogitator into its meager consciousness and fed in what he knew about the weapon. The machine, its electronics interfaced with scraps of several human brains, hummed quietly as the pumps sped up to cope with the cognitive load. An indicator flashed on the output terminal, telling him to "Please wait..."

And, after a few minutes, the cogitator bleeped and gave Darhol its assessment. It was much the same as his own, he realized - a vehicle- or aircraft-mounted weapon, it was, with its high rate of fire. A tank-buster, perhaps, or maybe it was for mowing down armored soldiers - can-openers, a Techmarine once called them. The Engineseers on duty would probably like to see it.

He ordered the cogitator to copy its findings to a slate, and while he waited, he picked up his lunch, a humble sandwich. The cogitator pinged and retracted the connection to the slate before he could take a bite; it was working unusually fast today. Perhaps it didn't need any new brains.

Carrying the sandwich unheeded in one hand and the slate in the other, Darhol used a claw to nudge the door open. He headed down the long hallways to the grav lift. The sandwich in its entirety was consumed.

It took him a ten-minute walk and then a further five in the lift before he got to the station of an Engineseer he knew. He technically outranked Ejdelman, but the tinkerer with the peculiar accent had a deep knowledge of vehicle engines that had impressed Darhol the first time they met. They had traded favors, too, passing arcana of maintenance or improved machining processes between them.

There was nobody in sight, except for a pair of armored feet sticking out from underneath a large turbine. Ejdelman was singing to himself as he worked, and his voice echoed through the engine above him, mixed with the occasional mechanical whine or thump of his tools. Darhol picked up a measuring device of unfamiliar design - probably built by Ejdelman himself, ever the eccentric - then set it down, and cleared his throat aloud.

The man who emerged from underneath the machine wore robes similar to his own, but the man had fewer auxiliary arms, tougher than Darhol's own; and his right hand had been replaced with a pneumatic wrench. He stood up and stretched. "What have you brought for me today, sir?"

"An autocannon, I think." Darhol proffered the data-slate, and Ejdelman eyed it, reading through the notes.

"So, the late Explorator found this in Wray, did he? I think I went there, a long time ago." Ejdelman flexed and spun his wrench-hand. "And, did you know, the locals had the same kind of sandwiches there that you get here? Oh, this is a clever design - this part fires and it cocks the other part, yes?"

"Indeed," said Darhol. "Surely you jest about the sandwiches. Wray was almost a feral system when it was reincorporated. They had quarter-paste and cheese-food sandwiches on Wray?"

"Oh, they certainly did," said Ejdelman, his eyes misting in memory. "It was the most amusing thing of that place, I tell you. Only they didn't call it a quarter-paste sandwich." He set down the slate and connected one of his own to it, beginning a transfer.

"No? What did they call it?"

"They called it a Throne and cheese-food sandwich. They don't use the Imperial measurement system. So, these are good springs here. But we can make them, it is no trouble. The cartridge propellant, now... I don't think we know how to make that."

"I think we do, Ejdelman. It's just a different way of producing miners' detonite. One mills it into little flakes insted of powder."

"Hmm. But you know we don't make any of that stuff here, don't you? I don't know from explosives, anyhow. I know engines. And that is why I'm an Enginseer, of course."

"Of course."

"Well, what do you know, then. I'm going to talk to some guys I know, and maybe we'll do some talking with the Machine Spirit, hey?"

Darhol nodded. It wasn't often discussed among techpriests, but it was understood that while they had a high, intellectual understanding of the power and glory of the Machine, the supposedly lowly Enginseers had a visceral connection to it, through their years of physical intimacy with its manifestations. Having the Enginseers on his side, when he submitted his reverse-engineering and request for prototypes, would increase the chances of a good test run, a good omen.

The meeting itself was a good omen. Darhol spoke his farewells to Ejdelman and almost danced back to his office, his heart singing.

Even if the blessed, damned thing would never see the light of day, he felt pleased to have come to a conclusion of sorts. One day at a time, a Techpriest contributed to Mankind's knowledge of the Omnissiah. And today... today was no different.