Sticking to her existing plan Harmonia leans in to speak quietly to Jak so as not to interrupt the overall progress they have made.  ”Let me know if there is anything outside the machines I can help with otherwise I will continue to stay out of the way and watch for other threats.”

”I have not been able to gain access,” the Magos replies.

The Magos has one of the lay servants, an elderly man whose robes are raged, torn and faded, bur clean non the less, conduct Jak and Harmonia to along a short side corridor to a large and elaborate double door with an eight foot cog mechanicus as its main decoration, there are many seals and Omnissian scripts in place and damage, old and new, from attempts to gain forcible entrance.
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 "We shall endeavour to do so with the entirety of our resources, a freedom that you have not been offered." Jak answers calmly, adding a low-key sideband of honest admiration and benediction for the dutiful efforts of the Magos before he turns and accompanies the lay servant, motioning for Harmonia to join him - as well as his staff of course - as he remarks "This shall likely be, once more work for my group to undertake. May I ask if you have any skill in matters of administration, data access or logistics?"

 As he speaks, he's visually inspecting the door seals and the attendant mechanisms, looking for signs of what measures were taken to secure it in days long past.

Unlocking this door without the proper authority and physical key would be an arduous, (+40), task, Jak may make multiple attempts but each on adds ten to the Test Difficulty. The degree of success or failure on the final attempt will dictate how easy it is to physically open.
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While Harmonia doesn't examine the door nearly as closely she does pause to take in the size and damage to it before she steps back to give Jak more room.  ”It is probably best if you try to open this one first.”

 Arduous is one word. Functionally impossible is another, since while Jak is an extremely<i> accomplished tech-priest with an extremely solid grasp of matters metaphysical, there's a fairly major gap in his education when it comes to breaching the great vault door in front of him.

 Having been a fairly good student... No-one ever taught him to pick locks.

 Nevertheless, while the great bolts and seals that hold the door closed are beyond him, he can nonetheless determine which incantations and data-canticles are necessary to assume High Authority, and having <i>those available to him will be of no small benefit elsewhere. Setting his ornamental staff of authority into the central key-hole of the great door, he interfaces with it and begins to bend his augmetic mind to the task of assuming direct control.

 ---

Jak doesn't have the Security skill, so he can't do anything about the mechanical locks (if any), but between his sky-high intelligence, advances in the tech-use skill, his combi-tool, electro-grafts and his multi-key... He ought to be able to work his way through the electronic locks and gain enough information to spoof command authority in other places!

02:50, Today: Jak Tesla rolled 13 -- 3 degrees of success using the Warhammer Test system with a target number of 46.  Well, I can see about the data access side.

One by one circuits give way before Jak’s assault, machine spirits concede to his entreaties or intimidations and mechanical tumblers fall away until after more than an hour, he reaches the penultimate hurdle, an organic logic breaker that responds to every attempt with the same answer, ”I do not recognise you, you have no authority here.”

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It doesn't take long for Harmonia to realize Jak will be at this for a while so she starts to wander around again, looking but not touching at a bunch of things.  At some point she disappears from easy view but not loud noises or explosions imply anting inappropriate happening before she returns from a different direction.

”I am no map expert, but there seems to be a smaller, and considerably less damaged, door on the back side of this block of rooms.  Before we try to damage this one further we may want to inspect it more closely.”

 One by one, Jak overcomes or placates the vigilance of the machine-spirits guarding the chambers and - in doing so - secures vital knowledge about what authorizations may be asked for at other doors, as well as what code schemes are used in the Manufactorum.

 He chants, he passes his hands through ritual motions, he engages in verbal, digital and binaric sign-and-countersign, he lays his hand upon panels and plates and seemingly decorative features... And in the end he stands before the last barrier (that he can detect) and casts his authorizations into the teeth of an ancient servitor-mind augmented and tasked with the security of this chamber... And finds himself thwarted.

 So - trusting to the chance that the brain has some level of freedom of action, he presents his credentials in their entirety, includes a report on the current situation and enters a petition for access. After which (knowing that even success will take time) he turns to Harmonia and admits "It had not occurred to me that there might be a back door. An oversight upon my part. Please, lead the way."

Not needing any more invitation Harmonia leads the way to the other smaller door around the back of the section of rooms.

The ‘back door’ is a plain and simple thing, much like any other door they have so far encountered but even from a distance Jak can see that the security measures are likely to be much the same as those already encountered however, as they approach the door opens and a servitor walks out carrying a cylindrical object, there is a long, flexible tube attached to one end of the cylinder and the other end of the tube splays out into a wide, flat nozzle.

You are going to have to go some if you want to catch the door before it closes, if either of you are trying please give me an initiative roll.
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 The fact that the door almost certainly has the same security methods on as the main access route is no bad thing - he's solved almost all of them and recorded the codes, incantations, gestures and inputs needed to demonstrate his credentials to the machine-spirits involved...

 ...but the fact that there are servitors here which also possess those codes and that he didn't think to check for that (or for a back door) before spending the better part of two hours code-cracking and negotiating can't help but leave Jak feeling (in so far as much as he 'feels' a tad testy. As a result he lunges forwards as he sees the housekeeping servitor with the atmospheric-pressure-operated-dust-removal-tool passing through the door, attempting to prevent it from closing.

 ---

03:19, Today: Jak Tesla rolled 10 using 1d10+3.  Initiative.

Leading the way to the back door Harmonia hardly even seems to move more quickly, rather she is just in the right place at the right time, to reach out and catch the door even as it starts to fall backwards into a closed position.  Gesturing for Jak to go ahead of her she holds it open long enough for both of them, and any members of the entourage Jak is leading, to go in.

The door opens onto a large room in the centre of which is a control desk that wraps around the command chair in an almost complete circle, leaving just enough gap to gain access. Seated in the command chair are the mummified remains of a Grand Magos, he, or she is heavily augmented and the only remaining flesh visible is the left hand and part of the left forehead and cheek, in these places the skin is sunken, dry and translucent.

The pack affixed to her back is large, has a plethora of cables and pipes connecting it to all parts of the control panels and the glass encased coil on the top pulses brightly with blue light.

There is a wide space between the walls of the room and the control station and here are the paraphernalia of day to day living, a cot for sleeping, a table to take meals a library and a large holographic communicator currently on but with just static filling the projection space.

That door was supposed to be almost impossible to catch but as Harmonia maxed out her Initiative roll it would be churlish of me not to give it to her.
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 It can't help but be slightly galling for an unaugmented human to so rapidly outrun himself and his companions, especially after she proved herself a more unorthodox (but successful) problem-solver as well, but Jak comforts himself with the thought that he didn't give any orders, his eight adepts are by no means combat-rated and the two combat 'borgs are under orders to protect, not to hold doors.

 Nonetheless, praise where praise is warranted draws a typically flat "Well done Confessor Wells." and a nod of the head as a short burst of binaric send the fabricator, the life-systems expert and their six subordinates to Make Themselves Useful to the Manufactorum command team while the two 'borgs station themselves at the door - since the holy mysteries of the inner rooms of a Magos are not for the uninitiated (except of course, the Confessor who has earned access to them today).

 Smoothly, he crosses the room to examine the Grand Magos for a few moments, reaching out to her implants with polite, surface-level requests for data access and attention before he so much as dares to plunder any deeper.

Accepting the praise with a polite, if not entirely humble, nod Harmonia refrains from going to far into the room or near any of the blinking lights and delicate switches.  Instead she quietly closes the door they came in through so that it won't look out of place to anyone outside the room.  ”Let me know if you need anything else, otherwise I will hang out over here and keep an eye out for any potential problems.”

The door closes with a muted ’click’, followed by another and then a series of assorted mechanical noises as the various complex locks and defences fall back into place leaving Harmonia alone in the corridor, apart from the two hulking borgs who both turn to look at her.

Jak finds the mechanisms attached to the dead Magos compliant, not only that but an echo of the Grand Magos’ consciousness remains within the complex machinery, dwelling within the crystals that once artificially boosted his or her memory.

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 The two burly Classiarii - neither of them looking even slightly organic and both of them festooned with the sort of alarmingly deadly weapons that would be lethal for an unaugmented human to even carry - settle nicely into their duty stances.

 Jak meanwhile - quite unaware that the door has just sealed - rejoices at his successes, doing the best he can to provide organic run-time for the echoes of the Magos using chunks of his own neural tissue he isn't currently using (thus neatly sidestepping the unspeakable heresy of silicon animus) in order to ask simple, but important questions like 'what was the nature of the problem the shield was supposed to solve' and 'where did you leave your keys?'

With nothing of any use to do in the small side room Harmonia returns to the larger space to look around and see if there are any other hidden rooms, or fully organic people engaged in activities that don't involve the overly complicated running of machines that her allies have well in hand.

 Harmonia's comm-bead chimes with a complex and tonal five-part chime that leads into a recognisable, but extremely vibrant Jak's voice "Success! Command and control codes have been located. Stand by for group conference."*

 ---

* Continued in The Disk.

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Still poking around the area outside the locked room Harmonia pauses to reply to the short ranged comm bead.  ”It sounds like you are stuck here until we sort this out?
 In that case you should use your temporary control to stop whatever orders you can, get this place back under control and let the disk project end.”

***From the Pious Lament***

Closing her direct input but leaving it open for response then openning another to the Manufactorum based crew ++Magos, Gelron Primary has had a change of leadership and we hear they are attempting to destroy the Launcher mechanism. I am attempting to get troops sent there from the Northern Alliance, I am aware that they possess a skitarii armoured regiment. If you could attempt to convince them to mobilise immediately and head to defend the launcher we are enroute as fast as we can to provide support. If the Manufactorum has any troops and a way to get to the surface that may be prudent. Our shuttles both on the surface and the manufactorum are at your disposal.++

 "At this juncture, it would be premature to alter the priorities of the Manufactorum. It is my intention to confer with the Magos who has commanded the station to determine the most effective way to restore normal operations without causing significant damage." Jak answers, both refusing the request and also explaining the thinking behind his doing so... Just as the message from the Lament comes in, and priorities need to be reassessed again.

 A minimal-content message is sent to the Magos directly, inserting itself into his data-feed in order to explain that command access has been achieved, but not bestowed and that there is a candidate from the Pious Lament who is qualified to receive it as well as the Magos himself. Recommendations are sought.

 After that an attempt to communicate with the Skitarii command structure is made, a series of self-replicating mimetic signals dispatched in order to request that their senior priest contact the Manufactorum to receive an updated situation report.

 Which leaves Jak to propose - to both Searlait and Harmonia - "Further action at the Manufactorum is pending, but in the interim it seems to me as though the matter facing us is predominantly sociological rather than theological. The human population in this system has been focussed upon the manufactorum and the shield for an extended period of time. Simply informing them as brute fact that the situation has changed would appear to be an invitation to chaos. I propose that Confessor Wells is the most qualified to create a psychological buffer to begin the process of returning the system to normal operation and I am willing to place communications resources at her disposal to achieve this end."

While still keeping an eye on the room Harmonia turns the majority of her attention on the comm bead.  ”While I commend you for your confidence both in my ability, and the general ability of humanity to understand it, but I believe this situation may be to far gone for me to resolve without some amount of in person communication, if we can't implement a quick solution here I may need to take the shuttle down to the planet.

I know little of your exact methods, but if your current difficulty is one of authority I recommend creating a new layer of authority to allow the current operator to make changes, but retain for yourself the ability to select a new operator as needed, or even more than one.”