Chapter 358: Harbinger of Invasion
As they descended from the starport's space elevator to the surface, the disdain in Fletcher's eyes grew even more pronounced.
Scintilla, the most prosperous capital in the Calixis Sector, seemed so savage and backward in his eyes. Much of the technology he saw was so primitive that, in his era, it wouldn't even have been used for civilian purposes.
In the crowded marketplace, even though Fletcher wore the clothes Collins had prepared for him to cover his appearance, he still attracted people's attention. The face that occasionally peeked out from under his hood, and the air of authority he could not conceal, made him seem like an alien in this place.
Looking at this savage, backward world, Fletcher even felt the urge to just lash out and kill all these people.
"This is our world... how dare they turn it into this?! Look at these people... filthy... ignorant..."
"My Lord! We should leave. We are too conspicuous here. It will be easy to attract the attention of the usurpers," Collins couldn't help but say, seeing the growing number of people looking at them and the increasingly agitated Fletcher.
He did not want to be exposed now; it would disrupt the original plan. He knew Fletcher's psychic power was strong, but there were only two of them, and the warships of the False Emperor's followers were still floating overhead. He prepared to lead Fletcher, as planned, to the location of the meeting between Lucan and the Navigators.
What they did not know, however, was that their group had already attracted the attention of the agents the Mongorte Dynasty had dispatched here.
The marketplace was a place where all sorts of people gathered. A large number of agents, Inquisitors, and their acolytes from Ian's branch of the Inquisition had long been stationed here. The news of Lucan's imminent arrival had already put them on the highest alert, determined not to miss any anomaly.
These people, who on the surface were members of the Inquisition, were in fact all people of the Mongorte Dynasty. Just like with the Blood Ravens, they had been selected from the very beginning to ensure that these people who joined the official departments of the Imperium were also on the side of the Dynasty.
"Casey, do you see that man?"
"You mean the one in the hood? His aura looks like that of a great noble. But a great noble comes to the marketplace with just a few people?"
"I also think it's strange. They don't look like they're here to buy or sell anything. We have the trading platform these days... which great noble would personally come to a place like this? And at a sensitive time like this... notify the Raiders and also contact the nearby Blood Ravens. They have a kill-team stationed here. We'll go and verify their identities!"
But just as the two agents were about to act, a commotion suddenly erupted in the entire marketplace.
Crazed roars and screams suddenly rang out from all corners. Some people's faces twisted in pain, and then they suddenly launched attacks on the crowd. One of them even suddenly awakened as a psyker. The uncontrollable psychic backlash instantly killed everyone nearby.
These berserk individuals charged into the crowd. They seemed to have completely lost their minds, hacking and killing anyone they saw. Those without weapons even used their teeth to bite through the throats of their companions.
Seeing this, the agents could no longer be bothered with Fletcher's group. They immediately began to attack the assailants. The scene was too similar to a riot caused by hidden Chaos cultists. A piercing alarm blared, attracting the city's Enforcers and the Arbites. A nearby Blood Ravens squad also charged toward the area.
Under the suppression of absolute military force, the riot was quelled in the blink of an eye, leaving only a field of corpses. When the two agents turned back to look for Fletcher's group, they had long since vanished.
The two agents approached the Blood Ravens. "My Lord... what in the world happened?"
"The power of the warp... perhaps it was cultists," the Librarian in the Blood Ravens squad said in a low voice.
"Related to Chaos?"
The two agents immediately told him about Fletcher, whom they had noticed earlier. But when they tried to confirm his identity and whereabouts through the local surveillance network, they found that his appearance was blurred in all the pict-feeds. And after he had left, all the cameras that had recorded him had malfunctioned.
"Find them! We have to find them, whatever it takes!"
In the minds of the Blood Ravens and the Inquisitorial agents, Fletcher's group were just more cultists; they didn't think much more of it. They thought it was a riot manufactured by a Chaos cult to disrupt the meeting between Lucan, Guilliman, and the leaders. But after investigating the people who had lost control, they found that there was almost no connection between them. Some were even merchants who worked for the Dynasty.
The whole incident was strange. If the others had been unknowingly seduced by Chaos, that was one thing. But the people who worked for the Dynasty had to undergo a comprehensive inspection every so often. How had this Chaos corruption escaped the purifying power of the Mark of Purity?
What the Dynasty's agents did not know was that this was a Harbinger Event, caused by the ever-nearing approach of Komus to Scintilla. Fletcher, in the end, had not been able to resist mobilizing a portion of Komus's power. And Komus, now infused with a massive amount of the Four Gods' divine might, had its secondary catastrophic effects amplified. The power of the gods, using Komus and the Well of Eternity in Tzeentch's hands, could, to a certain extent, directly penetrate the veil of reality and affect the material universe, causing these people to instantly lose their minds.
And when the agents had noticed Fletcher, he had long since noticed them. Seeing the Blood Ravens' Librarian, an interested expression appeared on Fletcher's face. He had little regard for the technology of this era, but psionic power was still very interesting. In his eyes, for someone who had undergone such ordinary genetic enhancement to be able to control psychic powers so stably was no easy feat.
"Let's go, Collins. Take me to meet the other 'followers' you spoke of. I will tell Olivia to prepare for action."
"Yes, my master!"
Collins led Fletcher to the designated Navigator palace. Pacini had already arranged for people to receive them and was awaiting their arrival.
"Lord Fletcher, Pacini, Patriarch of House Ortelius, pays his respects to you. The power of my house and I are at your disposal! We will help you rebuild your empire!"
Pacini looked at Fletcher with reverence, but his eyes also revealed a trace of desire... he longed to obtain the same powerful psychic abilities as the Man of Gold before him.
Fletcher looked around the palace with interest. He reached out and stroked the exhibits in a display case. Many of the works of art and decorations were even relics from the Golden Age, which made him reminisce about that time. The more he saw, the more he could not accept that the glory of the past had become this.
"You said that the two leaders of the usurpers will be arriving here soon?"
"Yes, my lord!"
"Excellent. At least we won't have to go looking for them. We will deal with them all at once."
"My Lord... I'm afraid we may not be able to do it with our strength alone. Your mastery of psionics is second to none. As Navigators, we are well aware of its power. But if our enemy were anyone else, it would be fine. But if it is that Lucan, we will need more strength. That person has a special ability; he can devour psionic energy. To try and kill him with psionics... is very difficult. And if we fail, if we cannot kill him in one blow, the consequences will be unimaginable. His warships are still docked in orbit. If he becomes enraged and uses his fleet to strike, none of us will survive!"
Pacini reminded Fletcher. After all, Lucan could even devour the divine power of the Four Gods. Fletcher's psychic power was far from reaching that level.
"Devour psionic energy? Rest assured, our methods are not so limited..."
Fletcher used his psychic power to contact Olivia, who was still on Komus. At this moment, she was also having a massive headache. Repairing some of the Annihilation Engines was not as smooth as she had imagined. There had originally been hundreds of the powerful automata on Komus, but almost all of them had been destroyed in the daemon attack.
Under normal circumstances, the maintenance of these automata was all handled by the Men of Stone they had created. These loyal and mechanically gifted Men of Stone had allowed most of the Men of Gold to grow lax in their own mechanical studies. After all, the Men of Stone could handle everything, and even do it better. And with their obsession with psychic ascension, why would they continue to put effort into mechanics?
But thankfully, the related maintenance equipment on Komus was highly automated. STCs were not a rare thing in their era; every colonization fleet had one, let alone Komus. Although most of this equipment had also been damaged in the battle, Olivia had discovered that a small amount of it was, beyond all reason, still functional. And this equipment, just like the intelligent system within Komus, had been possessed by the daemons of Tzeentch. The antivirus software itself had become a daemon; there was no way to protect the equipment here from being possessed.
Driven by a combination of psychic power and daemonic energy, although she could not repair all of the automata, by cobbling together the still-intact parts, she had still managed to repair 30 of them in a short time. After regaining control of them, these automata could at least display 70 percent of their original combat effectiveness.
Even at 70 percent, it was still terrifying. One could imagine what the scene would be like if 30 units, whose physical on-paper data was close to that of a Primarch, suddenly appeared on the battlefield. They would not tire, they would not feel pain. Their metal bodies and weapons from the Golden Age, combined with their powerful onboard computational capabilities... any one of them appearing on a conventional battlefield could be said to be a game-changing existence.
"Fletcher, 30 units. Thirty is the limit of what I can do right now," Olivia reported.
Hearing her reply, Fletcher's heart was more at ease.
"That's enough... After we deal with these two usurpers, we will have enough time to find still-operational manufacturing and research facilities. From what these servants have said, the sectors controlled by these usurpers are much smaller than our former domain! Wait for my signal. I will use my psychic power to guide you. When you receive my signal, teleport all of them here!"
"Rest assured, I am ready. Although the weapon systems on Komus are severely damaged, a portion of them are still functional. If their warship level is truly as you say, then the current Komus is more than enough to deal with them! Leave all the warships in orbit to me!"
"Olivia, can you contact our other kin?"
"I cannot. The intelligent system on Komus only recorded their messages. They said they have already gone to the other important worlds of the usurpers. Without Komus's help, I cannot achieve long-range communication with them."
"I understand... they must have their reasons for doing so! We will first complete the task before us!"
After receiving Olivia's confirmation, Fletcher once again looked at Collins and Pacini. "There is no need to worry. I have already prepared a way to deal with him. Take me to this meeting you speak of!"
"As you command!"
At this time, Lucan and Guilliman had also arrived on Scintilla. The preliminary preparations for the meeting were all complete. The sooner they could control these Navigators, the sooner they could relieve the pressure on the Imperium.
Under the protection of a host of guards, the group headed for the palace belonging to the Navigator Houses. However, on the way, the expression on Guilliman's face, who was sitting next to Lucan, seemed a bit worried.
"Guilliman? What's wrong? Did something happen?"
"Yes," he replied. "A communication has come from my crusade fleet. Massive daemon invasions have occurred in the Hazeroth Abyss, Segmentum Pacificus, Segmentum Ultima, and Segmentum Tempestus..."
"Daemon invasions? Even if an entire planet is corrupted, with the current strength of your crusade fleet, you should be able to solve it, right?"
"That is true, but it is too abnormal. Some of the planets showed no omens at all. There were no warp rifts or storms in the vicinity. Suddenly, an entire daemon legion would just appear on the planet. If not for your quantum communication system, we would not even have been able to learn of the situation there in advance. In the past, such an invasion would have swept through several nearby sectors, and each one would have cost the Imperium a massive number of soldiers. The Inquisition suspects that Alpha-level or even stronger psykers have appeared in these places."
"Alpha-level?! When did Alpha-level psykers become so cheap?" Lucan mused. "But as you said, that was in the past. Guilliman, let's focus on the matter at hand for now. Nothing is more important than this. After we have brought them under control, I will send my fleet with you to solve these problems."
Although he said that, Lucan also had a bad feeling in his heart. Chaos had been dormant for so long; they must be brewing some kind of conspiracy. Cypher had not sent any intelligence, which meant that this was not the work of the Chaos Space Marines. Their numbers were not enough to complete such a large-scale simultaneous assault. Lucan also believed that Chaos now had a good understanding of his own strength. Since they had launched such a large-scale operation, they must at least feel that it was enough to pose a sufficient threat to the current Imperium or to himself.
Hearing Lucan's words, Guilliman also nodded. As one after another of the gunships landed in the landing bay, the Ultramarines and the Night Sentinels began to take over the security of the surrounding area. The patriarchs of the three great houses did not dare to be arrogant and were all in the landing bay to welcome the two of them.