Aret reached the bridge.
Every last Astartes in his squad—and nearly thirty Planetary Defence Force troopers—had made it.
The collapsing ground had sent them sliding into the abyss, but the recipient had maneuvered his ship so that the open hatch swept in like the maw of some colossal beast, catching them mid-fall and swallowing them whole.
"Quantum Ghost Mode amplification in progress. Twenty percent remaining until maximum amplification range."
As the mechanical voice echoed through the bridge, Aret saw one of the main displays shift. It showed the ship and the surrounding external environment.
Centered on the vessel, ripples pulsed outward in all directions—expanding like waves across reality itself—spreading until they nearly covered the entire region beneath them.
The hive had sensed something was wrong. Bio-plasma beams poured upward in a furious barrage.
Aret stared, stunned, as the beams passed straight through the ship—through the bridge—through him—
And yet he felt nothing. Not even heat.
The ship seemed to have become non-physical, thinner than air, like pure void. The Tyranids' attacks did absolutely nothing.
"Warning. Initiating a jump within the selected range will exceed the bearing limit of the quantum beacon at the chosen coordinates."
At the controls, Kain's brow tightened.
If that was the case, he couldn't be sure he'd be able to shift the entire hive.
The so-called quantum beacon could be treated like an entangled particle—while its counterpart particle was housed onboard the ship.
That meant wherever the ship was, it could instantly jump to the beacon's coordinate.
And beacons came in different grades: the higher the grade, the more mass could be moved in a single jump.
Kain hadn't anticipated the STC excavation world turning into this. So the beacon he'd planted wasn't top-grade.
Of course, he didn't have just this one. There were other beacons—other star systems—and there were beacons of maximum capacity.
The problem was, the farther the destination, the longer the jump preparation time.
Right now, with the ship in this state, the hive's frantic fire was like shooting at empty air… but even this had a tolerance ceiling.
Kain watched a small window on the display—an indicator showing how long the ship could sustain this condition under concentrated enemy fire.
The effect reminded him of a scene from The Three-Body Problem: when they were fleeing the Droplet and accidentally slipped into another dimensional layer—where contact with realspace made the ship seem like air, where only an interference "projection" existed.
It was almost like the relationship between the Warp and the material universe had been inverted.
If the ship weren't still amplifying—expanding its effect radius—the swarm wouldn't even be able to observe it.
This amplification created spatial "ripples," like light bending under a distortion, projecting a distant image—forming a mirage you could see but not touch.
And the projection was visible only to the naked eye. Electronic instruments couldn't detect it at all.
Like a ghost story: the spirit can't be captured on film. Only living beings with minds can see it.
Anyway—this was all Kain's own trial-and-error. His best guesses and metaphors.
As for the real technical principles?
Don't ask him. He didn't know.
"Coordinates locked. Hyperspatial quantum engine entering…"
The jump countdown began.
"Jump preparation complete."
Kain still didn't execute immediately.
The Quantum Ghost Mode ring hadn't expanded to the beacon's load-bearing limit yet.
He checked the ghost-state timer again—how long this "untouchable" condition could still hold. The remaining time was shrinking.
That "remaining time" wasn't just for the current state. It already included the energy cost of expanding Quantum Ghost Mode to the preset radius and pulling the entire region into that state—plus the margin left over for how long the ship could endure afterward.
The moment the entire region entered that state, it meant the swarm and the ship would exist in the same dimensional layer again.
At that point, the Tyranids' attacks could hit the hull.
But Kain had already computed it—based on the hive's current firepower, the ship's surface energy layer could tank it long enough.
"Maximum amplification range reached."
Right then, Kain executed the jump without hesitation.
Time felt like it vanished—like space itself turned into nothingness.
But that was only how it felt.
To the eye, reality changed like this: everything became transparent, as if an endless, colorless expanse had wrapped around them.
Then it felt like his awareness was stretched across an infinite duration—like he'd glimpsed the full, terrifying complexity of the cosmos in a single breath.
When he snapped back, a fierce radiance flooded his vision—bright, but not painful.
That was because the ship filtered it.
The next second, his vision stabilized.
And what he saw made the bridge go dead silent.
"This is—"
"We moved to… near a star?"
"At this distance?!"
The Astartes were shaken.
A massive fireball filled the display—so vast it was beyond instinctive comprehension.
A star.
If they'd been looking through a viewport, their senses would've failed them. It was too close, too unreal. They only understood how near they were because the ship's screens were feeding them the data.
The corona roiled and erupted across the surface. It looked like the ship could be struck at any moment by violent ejections of stellar matter.
…
And then they understood how the hive would be destroyed.
They saw it—an enormous hive mass had been dragged along in the jump and appeared near the ship.
The vessel shuddered a few times as incoming fire finally hit.
But the shaking stopped almost immediately—because countless Tyranids and the hive itself were being baked by stellar heat, and then pulled inexorably by the star's gravity.
The ship, too, was being tugged. It seemed the untouchable state had been temporarily disabled.
Skin could feel the interior temperature rising.
But a moment later the ghost state reactivated, and the ship stabilized again.
"Quantum beacon recovered."
Once the recovery confirmed, Kain immediately took the ship away from the star.
He didn't perform another quantum jump—because that would mean leaving for a different star system. In this system, he'd only placed this single beacon.
Now he needed to return to the planet and put the Astartes back down.
He didn't plan to land. His hangar held two Thunderhawk gunships. He'd send them off in one—gift it to them—and have them take the item he was meant to deliver to the Great Sage.
At sublight speed, it took half an hour to reach orbit above the planet's near side.
Kain prepared to open the bay and launch the Thunderhawk—already loaded with personnel.
But a sudden anomaly froze his hand.
His finger stopped a centimeter short of the final confirmation.
He stared at the planet's abrupt transformation in absolute silence.
Was he too late?
He'd shifted the hive… and it looked like it had been unnecessary.
But he'd still gone through with it—
(End of Chapter)
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