He had the autocannons target the weakened armour sections. Smaller beasts came at his craft. They seemed to sense the weakness of number two, and they mobbed it clamping themselves to its armoured hull and thrashing at it with their limbs. The weight dragged at the machine pitilessly. The engine blew out, smoke presaging a flaring burst of flame. The machine's system alarms whooped as it pitched to the side and fell. Plaintive unpanicked pleas for aid bleated from its cybernetic cortex as it vanished into the boiling clouds.

Cawl ignored the streaming pressure and temperature indicators blinking at him as Automaton Two fell to its death. He concentrated on the island-sized beast which attacked the raft. Teeth grinding with the tension, he ignited the Vultaraxes' void jets and pushed them up to full burn. The semi-intelligent brains of the machines were reduced to passengers; he was in control. He jinked his robots through rushing mobs of the creatures, and swung them about once clear. As he prepared them for another attack run, the giant beast wrapped water-clear arms around the scow. Claws of high-pressure ice sawed through the metal. Gas gathered so carefully erupted from crumpled containment coils. Men, cyborgs and automata fell from the pitching deck. Others hung from the rails, moments from death, or poked hopelessly at the leviathan assailing them with electro gaffs and attractor hooks.

Cawl banked his automata back around. A quick calculation told him he needed more firepower. He was faced with a stark choice. Either the men and the raft would be lost or he could do something about it, inevitably revealing his illicit upgrades.

He took a moment to consider. He would be found out eventually that was certain. And being found out under heroic circumstances would only serve his cause. But if he did what he was considering doing, then he would have put one foot firmly into the court of the Mechanicum's great game. There would be no hiding from then on.

His machines hung in the air, their usurped cortexes bridling at the lack of action. Through their eyes, Cawl saw robots and xenos engaged in aerial battle.

<Cawl! What are you doing?> demanded Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma. <Recommit to the skirmish, now!>

The scow shook in the arms of the xenos. Grav-repulsors broke, showering sparks into the clouds. He could not hear the screams of the crew, but he could imagine them. He could imagine their terror. It was now or never.

There was one factor that tipped Belisarius Cawl into acting.

He cared.

A thought deployed a high-grade dominance code into the operations centre, bringing all the automata into his direct command. His field of view sub-divided into multiple individual fields, crowded with status graphics around the edge. Cogitators and servitors alike rang out alarms at Cawl's invasion. The other tech-adepts were confused at first as their units slipped away from their oversight and their desks went dead, then angry when they realised who had done it.