Chapter 485 - 485: Piloting the Titan

"In short, if there's anyone, or any equipment of significance, you wish to save, do it now. Once the warheads fall and the planet is destroyed, there will be no more time left."

With that final line, Trasolh finished speaking, and Kian left the office, returning to his Sanctum.

He sat on the bed there, lost in thought. Was a human world of fifty billion people really about to be destroyed, just like that?

Was there truly no other option left at all?

Leaning back against the pillow, he pulled out his personal terminal and started scrolling through his novel's comment section, hunting for a solution.

Reader A: PILOT THE TITAN, OLD FART KIAN! When's he gonna get in the Titan already?

Reader B: Everyone knows, if a gun shows up in a movie, it's gonna go off eventually. So Old Fart Kian, WHEN are you piloting that Titan?

Reader C: The author thinks he's being subtle, but literally everyone already knows Old Fart Kian's gonna end up piloting the Titan. Just get on with it already.

Kian shot up off the bed and slapped his own thigh.

"That's it! The Titan! The Reaver Titan! That thing could actually go toe-to-toe with the Ork Gargant!!"

He felt genuinely inspired. Turned out the comment section was full of geniuses after all.

He was about to go digging for a Titan piloting manual when a comm request suddenly connected to his quarters. Tech-priest Boothe.

"My lord, Magos Ferrocore's asking where you've gone.

Small groups of Orks have started appearing outside the Titan Temple's steel outer walls. Magos Ferrocore is worried a proper Ork force might reach the Temple and is reinforcing our defenses right now.

My lord, if you're free, please come to the outfitting bay and stand by near your Knight."

Ever since the Gargant appeared and the Astra Militarum's front collapsed, there had been no organized defensive line left in front of the Titan Temple at all.

Scattered Ork stragglers, unable to keep pace with the Gargant's main force, had started opportunistically attacking nearby human sites instead.

Beyond the Temple's outer steel walls, greenskins had begun appearing in growing numbers.

Fearing a wave of Orks beyond his ability to handle might defile his beloved Reaver Titan, Magos Ferrocore had thrown himself into a frenzy of fortifying the site.

Every templar-guard had been ordered onto wall patrol, Mechanicus workers were being issued lasrifles, and factory servitors were being hastily converted into combat units.

In the middle of all this tension, Kian, the very man who'd signed a defense pact with Ferrocore, was nowhere to be found, and Ferrocore had immediately called around looking for him.

Kian knew full well Ferrocore's tone would be sharp, the man was a paranoid, twitchy piece of machinery on the best of days. He told Boothe he'd be there right away, boarded a shuttle, and headed straight for the outfitting bay.

By the time he arrived, the Titan Temple had transformed entirely. It had once been a massive, bustling factory complex, workers moving to and fro.

Now, it had become a full-scale fortress complex.

Armed personnel and vehicles were everywhere, gun emplacements and heavy machine guns bristling atop every factory rooftop.

The Temple's outer perimeter was now ringed by three full layers of heavy steel walls, each over thirty meters tall, every one of them now fitted with heavy artillery and small arms mounts.

Once Kian reached the outfitting bay, he found Boothe and laid out his plan for saving the world.

"I want to compete for the position of Titan Principal. Walk me through what that involves."

Boothe stared at him like he'd lost his mind.

"My lord, are you insane? Do you understand what you're proposing? That's a TITAN!!

Since the last Principal was crushed to death by an Ork warship, this facility has run twenty years of selection trials for a new pilot. Close to five hundred thousand candidates have undergone the neural interface test.

Every single one of them died. Not one has ever succeeded!"

Kian pointed at his own face, then jabbed a thumb toward the gleaming gold Preceptor sitting in the outfitting bay.

"I tamed the machine spirit in that Knight in under three minutes. Just because nobody else could pilot a Titan doesn't mean I can't."

Boothe froze for a second, then remembered, right, Kian was already a Knight pilot.

And he was still genuinely reeling from the memory of Kian fighting back against the mechanical throne using nothing but his own bioelectricity, a feat that seemed like it could only ever belong to this one particular, impossible man.

Boothe hesitated. "My lord, the data-stream a Titan produces is dozens of times more intense than a Knight's.

That flood of information hitting your brain could inflict permanent organic damage instantly, reduce you to a vegetable in seconds.

And even if the initial surge doesn't kill you outright, you'll still need to spend an enormous amount of mental fortitude sustaining the connection against that ongoing torrent for a long stretch of time.

It's the equivalent of running a marathon while carrying a full pack. There's no guarantee you'd even survive to the finish."

Kian took a step forward, staring straight down into Boothe's eyes.

"Tech-priest Boothe. Your entire world is rotting from the inside out right now.

You must already know what the leadership's planning. Once the main hive falls, Exterminatus follows.

Boothe. You and your sister, Lieutenant Colonel Noa, were both born and raised on Forge World Primo-496a, weren't you? Do you genuinely want to watch your home destroyed completely?

Right now, the Governor has no answer. The Astartes have no answer. Even the Inquisitor has no answer. But I have one.

Let me pilot that Titan, the one nobody's touched in twenty years. Let me go beat that damned Gargant into the ground and put an end to this once and for all.

So, are you going to sit here doing nothing and wait to die? Or are you going to help me get into the seat of that cursed Titan, and go kill something far, far more cursed than either of us?!"

Hearing that, the hesitation in Boothe's eyes slowly drained away, replaced by unshakable resolve.

"Understood, my lord. If you're not afraid to die, then follow me."

Boothe led Kian deep beneath the Titan Temple, not to the Titan itself, or anywhere resembling a control room, but instead to a cogitator array storage vault.

The air here was bitterly cold, kept that way to preserve the surrounding cogitator arrays, tens of thousands of human brains housed within.

These brains sat encased in steel canisters, wired together through neural cabling, functioning as the Imperium's computing infrastructure.

Most were cloned rather than harvested, since cloned brains were more physically robust and better suited for this kind of use, not the product of harvesting living human skulls.

Boothe explained as they walked:

"Housed here is a complete cogitator array complex. Every scrap of data generated by the Titan Temple, every factory on this entire forge world, and all three hundred thousand templar-guard, is routed here for analysis and storage."

He led Kian deep into the array's core, where, incongruously, an enormous iron chair sat, wired into an overwhelming tangle of neural cabling.

Boothe pointed at it. "My lord, this is the Ascension Throne. Over the past twenty years, we've selected a great many candidate pilots and brought them here for testing.

One end of the Ascension Throne connects to fifty-five thousand separate cogitator arrays. Whoever ascends must sit in this chair and withstand the full torrent of data those arrays produce.

Death means failure. Success means earning the right to ascend to the sacred Titan itself, to sit upon its true throne, and face the machine spirit's genuine trial."

Kian understood. It was essentially the entrance exam. He asked, "Has anyone ever passed this test?"

Boothe shook his head.

"The Ascension Throne is more commonly known, among us, as the Execution Chair. The Idiot-Maker.

In twenty years, a full five hundred thousand candidates have sat in that chair. Not one has ever walked away from it whole. Every single one either died, or came out an empty-minded husk."

☆☆☆

-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!

-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper

(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)

If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you