Hello everyone. Hope all are having a nice day. On the most recent Whose Bolter is it Anyways, a very fun prompt was posted: Unlikely RomComs. My reply was that the principle Machine spirit of the Flagship and the Fortress Monastery of a Chapter love one another and purposely cause malfunctions when they reunite so they could spend time together. People seemed to enjoy the idea so I wrote a silly story about it. Hope you enjoy and as always, comments and critiques are welcome. Have a nice day!

***

"I hate returning."

Captain Alveron of the Void Lancers Adeptus Astartes Chapter looked askance at the speaker. "You do?" His deep voice was laced with surprise and concern. "You hate your home world that much?"

Techmarine Shasha glared back. His biological eye held the good will of a targeting laser. "Of course not. I am a loyal son of Velash just like you."

"You hate seeing your brothers then? I know there is some tension between the Techmarines and the majority of the Chapter but I never thought it was that acrimonious."

Shasha sighed. "No, I bear no ill will to my brothers and as far as I know, none bear any towards me."

"Then you should explain yourself."

Shasha gestured around the pair. They stood on the bridge of Velash's Fang, the Battle Barge and flagship of the Chapter. "Whenever the Fang returns to her home world, things go...awry."

The Captain narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean awry?"

"Whenever the flagship returns, we get wide spread systems failures both here on the ship and at the Fortress Monastery. Nothing crippling, but enough problems that require extensive system reboots and part replacements. It takes days to fix everything."

Alveron snorted. "Surely you exaggerate."

"I never have and you should know that Captain."

He did know that. Shasha had the reputation of being dryer than the deserts on Velash and took things as literally as a tarantula turret. "How long has this happened?"

"As far back as Chapter records have shown."

"Centuries?!" The serfs and mortal crew of the bridge looked at the Captain with astonishment. He rarely raised his voice even during battle. He waved at the irritably, embarrassed at his outburst and waited for the crew to resume their duties. "How have we not fixed the problem for centuries?"

"I do not know." Shasha's voice was lined with deep fatigue. "It happens as surely as the world turns. Watch as we make our approach vector. 3, 2, 1..."

As Velash's Fang approached the Fortress Monastery Oasys, a floating station that orbited the world, all seemed normal. However as if listening to Shasha's counting, the ship's lumens flickered and began to shut off one by one. By the time the ship came alongside the station, the bridge looked as if the ship had lost power. Emergency lights replaced the main lumens and the ship floated serenely in the void.

"I told you so Captain," Shasha said. Though correct, the Techmarine showed no satisfaction in being so. "The only question is how long it will take for systems to be operational."

Any misgivings Alveron had before returning were completely dispelled a few days later. After discharging his Company and debriefing with the Chapter Master, he had willingly attached himself to the Techmarines and the Master of the Forge to assist with the repairs. It was as Shasha said. Numerous systems on both Oasys and Velash's Fang were inoperable and required extensive system reboots and repairs. Most of the time the parts that needed repairing were small yet in difficult to reach locations. Not only that, when the parts were removed to be inspected, the parts were usually working fine. When reinserted, the systems would return to working order before another defect was found.

Thankfully nothing major was ever taken offline. Shields, weapons, sensors, life support, all were immune to the seemingly random system errors. What failed were what the Master of the Forge deemed as failures of inconvenience: turbolifts, the powered doors leading to non-essential rooms, lumens. The most frustrating errors were the diagnostic sweeps. At first the Captain found the need to do a diagnostic exam on the diagnostic programs to be amusing and ironic.

After two days of fruitless inspections he no longer found it amusing.

"Degas, what is this?" Alveron asked the Master of the Forge.

The Master looked at the screen of the diagnosticator. "Communications between the Monastery and the ship. Combination of data and audio."

"Do you know the source?"

The Master shook his head. "No. It was always there during the system failures. When I first assumed the role of Master, I spent considerable time and effort to try and find the source. I no longer waste the energy doing so."

"Could it be the source of the failures? A malicious scrap code causing system confusion?"

"That was my hypothesis." The Master disengaged his mechandrite with a crackle of sparks and a muffled curse. "That was why I focused my efforts on it back then. However, I found that the more I tried to prevent it, the longer the failures persisted. Whenever I let the communications proceed unmolested, the failures were fixed more swiftly."

"That makes...little sense."

"It makes absolutely no sense." The Master's tone was almost petulant. "Despite the lack of logic, I decided to focus on the systems themselves and annoyingly...it works out." He huffed a very human sigh of annoyance. "Somehow."

Alveron stared at the communication signal. "Perhaps...could it be the Machine Spirits?"

Degas stopped and looked at the Captain. "What do you mean?"

"Perhaps the subsystem Machine Spirits are malfunctioning? Perhaps they are the source of the-" A loud blast of static interrupted the Captain. The blast of static turned into laughter, deep body consuming laughter and the Captain stared at the Master of the Forge. He had never heard Degas laugh before this day. It was the most shocking event he had ever seen and he had seen a Mawloc consume a Rhino without chewing.

"Captain, our Machine Spirits are noble entities of the Motive Force. They would not sabotage us, their comrades in arms. Even if the subsystem Spirits were malfunctioning, the Principle Spirts would keep them in line. In fact, perhaps that is why they are communicating. The Oasys and the Fang could be aiding each other in fixing the system failures." He made the cog sign of the Mechanicum. "With such allies, the problems will soon be corrected."

Alveron nodded but he was not entirely convinced. He followed after Degas and he could not help but smile himself at Degas' continued humor. At least he helped fix one thing.