Imperial Dawn
Resurrection of Imperial Dawn
The cavernous hangar bay echoed with the foot falls of the two astartes, as they strode across the metal expanse towards their rendezvous. The hangar was almost empty, once used by the Mechanicum as a holding site for heavy mining machinery and automata, now it was home to just one vehicle; Imperial Dawn.
Imperial Dawn, an ancient Falchion class titan killer, over five-hundred tonnes of the finest technology the Mechanicum could muster, mounting a twin barrelled volcano cannon with the power to knock out the largest warmachines humanity has ever constructed. Imperial Dawn is a god killer, and from the markings on its hull, it had felled many.
Standing close to the ceramite flanks of the superheavy was a curious figure in orange and grey robes, not totally human; instead a mixing of cybernetics and flesh: Magos Berosus. The two astartes stopped short of the Magos and issued a greeting:
“Magos Berosus, lord Alpharius sends his regards, I am Percius and this is brother Amon”, the blue armoured marine gestured to the silent astartes to his right. The Magos’ tilted what could only be his head, and issued a blurt of noise from a speaker built into its chest, the filters inside of Percius’ and Amon’s MKIV helmets deciphered the binary speech with ease:
“Welcome warriors of the twentieth, your lord Alpharius has been supportive of our goals, as promised we have refurbished Imperial Dawn for use by your hort, however as instructed we have not covered over its previous twelfth Legion markings”. The Magos gestured to the World Eater iconography decorating the flanks of the god killer; bright red maws and crossed chain markings were clearly visible on every surface. The magos issued another blurt of binary static: “Pray tell how such a machine came to be in the hands of your legion?”
Percius’ vox clicked and his deep voice issued from his war helm; “It was recovered on the black sands of Dur Kazit by our scouts, looks like it suffered some sort of catastrophic power overload from the volcano cannons, the heat sink had cooked the World Eaters crewing it. Not one to leave such a prize behind we whisked it away to your forges Magos.”
More machine noise: “You are right in your assessment astartes, the charge unit for the volcano cannons was unable to vent the excess power during discharge and created an unstable feedback loop, it was inevitable that this ancient machine would devour its own crew in radioactive discharge once the heat sinks failed. However my adapts have calculated that there was a seventy-eight point eight-nine percent chance that the Dawn’s systems had been tampered with prior to its deployment, and that one of the ordnance officers on board escaped the devastation and was not among those listed as KIA”
“We wouldn’t know anything about that Magos” chuckled Percius, “Our lord thanks you for your efforts, and reaffirms his support for your goals. We have a thunderhawk transporter on station to receive Imperial Dawn.” Berosus inclined his head and tapped several keys mounted on a wrist pad, with a loud clanking sound the floor plate that Imperial Dawn was sitting on started to move towards the ceiling of the chamber taking the two Alpha Legionnaries with it, high above them the blast shutters irised open allowing snow to fall into the hangar.
Percius’ vox clicked: “Rho-Phi-Beta, this is hort commander Percius, stand by for delivery of Imperial Dawn”.
