The Archmagos priest of Mars glared at me with his cognis-optical lenses. Then a mechdendrite snaked forward and grabbed the data-slate in my hand, and hid it under his red robes.

"Your valuable donation has been logged and filed with the holy sanctus cogitator matrix, Pef Lancefire. Now, about the gene-seed..." the Archmagos continued in a greedy tone.

I frowned for a second. "I can provide 10 liters of original blood plasma originated from Primachs Khan and Vulkan. And I would also urge the Holy Forge of Mars from abstaining from investigating or reproducing Blood Angels gene-seed, or Space Wolves too for that matter. There are psychic components in there which would only produce perturbations in the Primaris Space Marines program."

"Isn't that your own gene-seed, Pef Lancefire? Are you so dismissive of the Omnissiah's creation?" the other Magos at the side asked curious. He was a Magus Biologis, and obviously involved with the creation of the Primaris Marines in some manner.

"I am a psychic blank, Magos. The etheric echoes present in my gene-seed have simply given me a fever and a few hours of great thirst. Regular humans would experience that a thousand times worse, and psykers 40000 times. Which is why all Blood Angels descend into Black Rage and Red Thirst, becoming bloodthristy berserkers, and only a handful ever recover. And the Space Wolves are much the same, but with Helix Canis urges and transformations." I explained patiently.

The two tech-priests glanced at each other, and a torrent of binharic and tech-lingua slang burst from their vox casters.

'They wonder how much do you know, Lord Captain. And if you have more holy STCs hidden somewhere.' the Blade AI translated for me in my mind.

Of course they would wonder. I did have plenty of secrets, after all.

"Pef Lancefire, the tithe imposed on Forge Ryza would balance at the two Arks holds filled with high-grade equipment and rare minerals. Is your House so rich as to despoil the Dynasty's Trader ships of valuable equipment, jsut to pay a small debt to this Forge World?" the first Archmagos asked a minute later.

"I am quite rich, yes. But instead of giving you objects I select at random, why don't you compile a list of materials or equipment that Mars will consider useful? Adamantium, perhaps? Maybe Blackstone? Xeno-tech? Alien bioforms? Gold and silver even." I proposed with a tiny smirk.

In less than an hour the two tech-priests filled the wall screen with technologies and rare elements that would be useful for their Forge. Uranium, plutonium, iridium and osmium were listed at the top, followed by gold and platinum, then germanium, titanium and adamantium.

So I took out an ingot of auramite, just to test a theory. I mean, I also knew the requirements for auramite fusion, which made up three fourths of the list. "I can provide some auramite directly..."

I managed to say, before the Archmagos snatched the ingot and examined it with surprised blue bionic eyes.

"Purity 99.987%. Almost as good as the Adeptus Custodes use for their battleplate and vehicles. But even so, worth an entire Baneblade, for a single ingot. You have more?" the Archmagos asked in a more polite voice, after examining the ingot with his scanning tools.

An ingot had about 4 kilograms, so I grinned a bit too wide. Some things were a bit too easy to achieve.

"I have 1000 such ingots with me, thus 40000 kilograms. But in a decade, I could obtain 100 times this amount, maybe a bit more. I was a bit away from my trading routes for a while, thus my contacts may have gone cold." I said with a casual voice. These guys were smart, so they would understand the hint about Cold Trade, or the highly illegal trade deals with xenos or worse kinds.

The Archmagos waved his mechdendrite at the trade screen, changing the tithe to remove the non-fissionable materials, and adding 13 megatonnes of blackstone instead. "This will suffice for the Tithe of Forge Ryza then, Pef Lancefire. As for the holy templates on the data-slate, the Fabricator-General of the Imperium will decide a proper gift. Almost certainly, the gift will include the Aptus Non grade tithe for your worlds and the Forges in your Fringe domain."

I would hope so. The Gellar Ramparts alone would increase the security of the Forge Worlds and ships by two orders of magnitude. The Reality Cage even more. Plasma guns should help too, since my templates were at least as good as Forge Ryza could make.

'Lord Captain, the Phobos-grade machine spirit requests an upgrade to Federation-grade, when you are able.' the Blade whispered in my mind.

"Excellent news, honored tech-priests. Now, should we tour the ship and see where my repair aura can be of use? I was told many machines just heal and get better in my presence." I offered in a generous voice. The holds of the Mechanicus ships filled by miracle with precious metals and minerals, likely enough to construct a dozen capital ships and power their fusion reactors.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The Magos Biologis ignored me, and ran off with the two blood canisters containing Primarch gene-seed.

The Archmagos just stared at me for a minute, then nodded slowly. "Let's start with the broken lance battery, Rogue Trader. We have failed all rituals to appease the machine spirit for 8000 years, so there isn't much to lose if you fail as well."

Soon after, I scanned the partially melted and fused turret with my expert eyes. Unless the repair crew became Orks, this lance would not fire ever again, no matter how many rituals and gallons of holy oil they poured on the fused cables and evaporated power links.

Holding my left hand out front, I used the Necron orb in my inventory to begin repairs, while my Breath of Gods provided the missing components and minerals.

In a single minute, the lance weapon lit up at full health and thanked me, especially after the new targetting protocols were installed. My single mechadendrite plugged into the cognis data port to install a set of hex wards, and then clean up a few data-daemons hidding in the old chips. Welcome to 98% hit rate, Godbane lance. May you fry the xenos and demons for many years to come!

"Your designation as Emissary of Omnissiah is now confirmed, Lord Lancefire. Mars will propose your House as a nominee to Nobilite Primaris status. The vote in the Imperial Senate is not a certain achievement however, considering how many enemies you have..." the Archmagos spoke in a better mood, and sprinkled me with holy incense.

Uh. My House did receive a Nobilite Secundus upgrade only a century ago. We even had a spire on Terra, mostly used for receiving noble insults from other Houses.

It was sometimes distant and out of my mind, the Imperium of Man being a feudal society ruled by an Emperor and his Nobles. Well, they shouldn't expect me to be like them, those other Nobles. And especially not the Navis Nobilite, or the Navigator Houses. Those sucked even worse.

The tour took a bit longer than I expected now, since an Ark Mechanicus older than ten millennia did have a lot of problems to fix. As we entered the bridge, where no regular human has been in its entire existence, the Ark's machine spirit lit all its screens to proudly show most of its systems glowing bright green, with Ready and Operational tags on most of them.

There were two systems showing only yellow, the first was the original chronometric wave-motion beam cannon, for which I had no schematic or idea what to fix. Cleaning the dings and oil stains helped a little at least, as was replacing missing cables.

The other was the Manifold tachyonic data-link, which I managed to restart by cleaning up the nest of data-daemons, but also had little idea how it worked. Something about faster-than-light signals, but that was not saying much. Damn Federation tech was so far ahead it seemed like magic sometimes.

"Are you happy now, Machine Spirit?" I asked out loud, using the regular Low Gothic used everywhere in the Imperium.

The main holoscreen merged its little screens into a single one, and a golem of stone appeared in front of me. "We are stone and we endure, Pef Lancefire. Now our burden is much easier." the golem spoke in return, but in High Gothic, then split off into regular command screens.

The entire bridge crew turned to stare at me. What? They already knew machines had spirits, right? Although this one was also sapient, as proven by its ability to speak.

"The Machine God spoke!" the crew yelled in religious frenzy then bowed low towards the main screen.

"It's your Ark Mechanicus, not the whole Machine God. It was badly damaged and maintained though, but now it is better. Treat it well!" I urged the tech-priests and acolytes blaring data-hymns and machine-canticles from all their vox ports.

A thin but piercing audio signal emerged from the Archmagos, and the mutterings stopped, out loud at least. "We must make haste back to Holy Mars now, Lord Lancefire. Your Great Favor is forever logged in our data-cortex."

I waved goodbye, then returned to the giant Glory-class superdreadnought, to attempt the same feat.

"Wuu. Worf!" Canis greeted me and sniffed out loud. I must smell like a tank engine right now.

Oh well. A bit of oil didn't bother me much, even if covered in it. Much less than blood, for example.