Chapter 34: Secret Base
The beam struck without warning, a lance of emerald light that punched through an Alpha warrior's armor. The effect was immediate.
The warrior glowed from within, sickly green radiance pulsing through the ceramite before he disintegrated. Armor, weapons, even his bones, all reduced to ash that scattered across the deck. Reality itself seemed to reject his existence.
The Alpha Legion responded with lethal efficiency. Warriors found cover and returned disciplined fire.
Omega moved like a shadow among them, his presence a void in the mechanical constructs' targeting systems. Where he stood became nothing, an absence the machines couldn't see.
A skeletal form turned, weapon raised. It fired at empty space.
Omega was already moving. His power sword swept through the construct's neck with surgical precision. The machine collapsed, severed. Then the head rotated. It reconnected to the bisected torso with mechanical ease, joints clicking back into place.
Omega didn't hesitate. His blade struck again and again, each blow fracturing armor, severing joints, reducing the construct to scattered components. Dozens of strikes in heartbeats.
The fragments transformed into streamers of emerald light and vanished. No residue. No wreckage. As though the construct had never existed.
The Alpha warriors saw this and drew their own conclusions: overwhelm them with firepower.
When Omega encountered isolated constructs in the vessel's confined corridors, he destroyed them with brutal efficiency.
His enhanced reflexes let him anticipate their firing patterns, position himself outside their targeting calculations before they could adjust.
An hour of sustained combat followed.
When the final construct fell and dissolved, the flagship bore deep scars. Hull breaches sealed with emergency bulkheads. Weapon mounts destroyed. Compartments vented to void.
But no bodies remained. The enemy had erased themselves from physical reality, leaving only destruction in their wake.
The void battle followed similar patterns. The Alpha Legion excelled at concealment, at identifying vulnerabilities, at striking without warning. They didn't fight wars of attrition.
The fleet adapted fluidly, formations shifting to enable coordinated strikes regardless of where the five crescent-shaped vessels materialized.
After half a day, the alien warships executed a coordinated retreat. They vanished and didn't reappear within ten million kilometers.
No trail. No residue. They simply ceased to exist within observable space.
The flagship's command bridge held an unusual gathering. Several Mechanicus adepts stood with Alpharius and Omega before tactical displays showing the engagement's data.
Julius, a sage whose augmented body bore more machine than flesh, spoke first. "This represents technology beyond anything we've encountered.
These constructs, mechanical skeletons, may function as the equivalent of our Iron Slaves. Intelligent automata deployed while their makers remain hidden."
Alpharius absorbed this with visible tension. The Rangdan war had only just ended. Decades of brutal conflict.
To encounter another civilization with superior technology so soon afterward demanded extreme caution.
The cost had been catastrophic. The Dark Angels, once among the Great Crusade's largest Legions, had been reduced to a fraction of their strength, fifty thousand dead in the final Xenocide alone.
Other Legions remained combat-ineffective. The mortal auxiliaries had lost hundreds of millions.
The Imperium couldn't afford another such war.
Omega smiled, cutting through the tension. "Consider this rationally. The Imperium spans vast territories now. We've encountered countless xenos civilizations.
Yet civilizations with this level of technology? Remarkably rare." He paused. "Suspiciously rare, wouldn't you agree?"
Russell, one of the Mechanicus adepts, looked confused. "Sir, what do you suggest?"
"The Emperor's prohibition against artificial intelligence wasn't arbitrary." Omega gestured toward the tactical data. "What if this civilization was devastated by its own creations? What if their population was decimated, their capacity for sustained warfare compromised?"
Understanding spread across the assembled faces. Alpharius's tension eased.
"A civilization like that, regardless of technology, couldn't sustain a century-long war." Alpharius nodded slowly. "The Emperor's wisdom proves itself again. The ban on artificial intelligence research was more prescient than we knew."
He laughed, genuine relief in the sound. "You're right. The Emperor possessed foresight beyond any of us. No civilization could survive such losses and remain a viable threat."
Among the Mechanicus contingent, subtle silence prevailed. The gathered sages knew truths left unspoken. Cogitator-class machines circumvented the AI prohibition through biological computation rather than silicon.
On countless conquered worlds, advanced AIs had been discovered and destroyed by the Dark Angels. The matter wasn't truly technological, it was theological. But such observations remained private.
Omega's focus shifted. The mechanical constructs' spatial manipulation fascinated him, their capacity to transition instantaneously between distant points without traversing the void between.
"This technology," he said thoughtfully, "proves spatial displacement is achievable. Before encountering these constructs, I wasn't certain such technology was theoretically possible. Now we have proof. Others can achieve what has been demonstrated."
He drew parallels from history. "Consider atomic weapons. They seemed theoretical fantasy until their first detonation. Afterward, the possibility became undeniable, and other nations achieved them through known pathways. This represents a similar threshold. The Imperial scientific establishment can now pursue teleportation with confidence rather than speculation."
The discussion turned briefly toward the captured Rangdan war commander, but Alpharius imposed immediate silence with a gesture. Some matters remained beyond discussion.
Yet one of the Mechanicus adepts, Prit, whose frame bore four mechanical tentacles and whose body was more machine than flesh, whose optical sensor glowed with eerie green luminescence, spoke with careful gravity.
"My lords, the Space Wolves departed with considerable haste. However, our salvage teams recovered classified documentation from the Rangdan warlord's flagship."
He activated a data stream that projected holographic schematics into the void space. "Approximately twenty light-years from this location lies an installation that appears to function as a research facility."
"The documents suggest the Rangdan were conducting studies into technologies of extraordinary potential. Should you wish to investigate, the location is accessible."
Alpharius remained silent, weighing implications. The mechanical constructs they'd fought possessed capabilities exceeding anything in the Imperial arsenal. The Rangdan had built mobile planet-fortresses. And now evidence of a research installation containing the theoretical foundations for both.
"Your choice is clear," Omega said simply. "We can pursue this."
Alpharius nodded. The fleet's formation shifted. Four hundred warships separated to complete the original mission, systematically hunting remnant Rangdan forces across contested space.
Fifty vessels of the elite Alpha Legion, accompanied by Mechanicus Titan Legion specialists, plotted a different course. Based on salvaged data, they executed a coordinated Warp-jump toward the coordinates.
The system that materialized was a death-world in the truest sense.
Moyasco orbited a dying star, a red giant in its final stages, its outer layers already consuming the inner planets. Only two worlds endured in the outer orbital zones, preserved by distance and the peculiar mathematics of stellar collapse.
One remained tidally locked. Its sunward face subjected to temperatures that melted stone into flowing lava. Its far side locked in eternal darkness, ice accumulating across eons.
The temperature differential created a fractured world, scorching inferno and glacial wasteland in permanent, violent opposition.
The Alpha Legion fleet emerged from Warp-space directly into stellar radiation flooding from the massive sun. Omega felt momentary disturbance as the flagship's void shields compensated for the thermal assault. The sensation passed quickly.
The Mechanicus sages immediately began systematic planetary surveys. Exploration vessels detached from the main fleet, descending toward Moyasco's surface to conduct reconnaissance in the ice canyons dominating the planet's dark hemisphere.
Seven days of methodical scanning followed.
Then an exploration vessel transmitted its discovery: unusual energy radiation emanating from deep within one of the vast ice canyons. The radiation signature matched nothing in Imperial databases.
It matched nothing known to the Mechanicum.
Omega received the transmission with deliberate calm, though implications cascaded through his mind.
They had found something. Whether that something would prove valuable or catastrophic remained to be determined.
[End of Chapter]