Birth

Roswell VII, transport ship Bloody Worm.

Several pitch-black Drone Xenomorphs appeared silently in the corridor.

They grabbed the limbs of the Chaos Space Marine, dragging this host—who was currently gestating a new life—toward a cabin.

A bulge was gradually rising on the chest of this Chaos Space Marine, who was caught between life and death.

Segmentum Solar, Solar System, capital of the Imperium of Man, Terra.

Warmaster Horus Lupercal was directing the troops of his various traitor legions to seize the starports.

The most brutal battles in the history of the Imperium of Man were erupting here.

Legions of Astartes, including the Blood Angels, Dark Angels, White Scars, and Imperial Fists, were fighting to the death to defend Terra.

Rebel legions such as the Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children, Alpha Legion, and Death Guard were launching fierce offensives.

If Astartes, standing between two point three and two point five meters tall, were considered little giants.

Then the Primarchs, standing over five meters tall, were true giants, as majestic as gods descending to the mortal realm.

At this moment, Horus Lupercal, clad in magnificent custom-made Power Armor, stood on the deck of his flagship, delivering a speech.

He wore no helmet, revealing a bald head, with the glowing device built into his gorget casting a ring of red light around his neck.

He was a man with wide-set eyes, a resolute and stern face, possessing an aura of natural authority.

With a scarlet cloak and intricately carved black armor, the center of his breastplate featured a massive red vertical pupil carved from crystal and gemstones—the Eye of Horus.

"Kor Phaeron, where are the Chaos Dreadnoughts and psychic offerings you promised me? Why haven't they arrived yet?"

Horus looked down from his height, questioning the Word Bearers deacon beside him.

Kor Phaeron replied helplessly:

"Reporting to the Warmaster, they lost contact near the Roswell System."

"Hmph!" Horus let out a cold snort and said:

"If Lorgar were here, I would certainly make you regret this to his face."

Changing the subject, Horus asked:

"How is the sacrifice you prepared using the Antarctic Hive City progressing? Our offensive on the front lines is stalled. You must understand, this is not the time to bargain with me; our troops need the power of 'them'."

Kor Phaeron knew who Horus meant by "them."

The Warmaster had always refused to accept the corruption of the Chaos Gods and lacked respect in his speech. Although he had been bewitched by the Chaos Gods and determined to launch a rebellion, he only wanted to use their power to achieve his own ends, rather than becoming a devout believer of the Chaos Gods.

"Everything is proceeding smoothly, Warmaster," Kor Phaeron replied respectfully.

"Warmaster, please believe that the great gods are watching us at every moment. This is a moment that will define history. The blindly loyal lapdogs of the False Emperor are merely putting up a desperate struggle. Soon, more warriors blessed by the four gods will join the battlefield, and we will reverse all of this!"

Horus nodded. Although he was not a fanatic deacon like Kor Phaeron, who had long-term contact with the entities of the Warp, nor was he a psyker, he could still feel—thanks to his superhuman Primarch intuition—those gazes from the Warp, piercing through the barrier of the reality's Veil and focusing upon him.

This gave Warmaster Horus an involuntary sense of transcendent pride and satisfaction—the gods of the entire universe were watching him; I am the chosen one!

Inside a cabin on the Bloody Worm.

The Drone Xenomorphs had constructed a "habitable" nest here. Yellowish-gray biological tissue covered every corner, with dense veins creeping and growing along the floor like the roots of an ancient tree.

The unfortunate Chaos Space Marine lay in the very center.

Several pitch-black Drone Xenomorphs gathered around the Chaos Space Marine. They deliberately bit off their own limbs, letting turbid yellow blood drip from the wounds, drop by drop, corroding the Power Armor that had already fused with the twisted flesh on the Chaos Space Marine's chest.

Within the bulging chest cavity of the Chaos Space Marine, a mass of black, living matter was writhing and rolling beneath the skin.

The yellow Newborn's half-human, half-xenomorph skull face displayed an anthropomorphic expression of anxiety; its heart was extremely tense at this moment.

The Chaos Space Marine's chest cavity held its greatest expectations.

The expectation of breeding a more powerful new breed of Xenomorph within the body of an Astartes.

The Newborn recalled that Belinsky had once told it that in the AVP Universe, a Predalien had once been born from the body of a Yautja.

Following that logic, it was certain that a more powerful "Astartes Xenomorph" could be born from the body of a Space Marine!

The bottle of "Black Goo" that Belinsky had brought into this world came from a reincarnation world called Prometheus. The Black Goo could use the womb of a human female to breed a brand-new Xenomorph variety—the "Trilobite"—which would further evolve into the "Deacon" Xenomorph.

But unfortunately, all Space Marines were male and lacked such an organ as a womb, so they could only complete the first step of evolution in the form of a traditional chestburster. However, the sturdy, specialized chest plates of the Space Marines hindered this evolutionary process.

(Author: The fact that the world-building logic between two classic IPs has been connected so tightly and self-consistently by the author—everyone, type "rigorous" in the chat!)

The few Ovomorphs that had grown beside the pile of corpses were "Astartes-version Ovomorphs" that the Newborn had bred using the genes of the deceased Astartes Xenomorph.

Compared to ordinary Ovomorphs, and even the Praetorian Ovomorphs capable of ejecting Royal Facehuggers, these were even more powerful, which would increase the probability of the chestburster successfully breaking out of the Chaos Space Marine's chest cavity.

What the Newborn did not know was what kind of struggle the Xenomorph larva inside the Chaos Space Marine was currently experiencing.

This Chaos Space Marine was no ordinary Chaos Space Marine; he was a Possessed Marine.

Inside his body, there also resided a Chaos Daemon from the Warp...

The Xenomorph, a great work that the "Engineers"—an alien race with extremely high attainments in biotechnology—had pinned their hopes on to change the fate of their species.

The Engineers, in the AVP Universe, are the creators of humanity.

The Xenomorph species possesses an incredibly high ceiling, as their genes hold infinite possibilities.

The Astartes, those genetic weapons designed and forged by the savior of humanity, the great Emperor himself, are likewise the supreme crystallization of the most advanced biological technology of humanity in the Warhammer 40K universe.

Astartes, Xenomorphs, Warp daemons—when these three are combined, what kind of existence could be born?

The Newborn observed the incubation process closely, and then it saw a scene that left it astonished.

Within the bulge on the Chaos Space Marine's chest, that black Xenomorph larva was writhing and tumbling, appearing in a state of flickering in and out of existence.

It wasn't invisibility... rather, it was rapidly vanishing and reappearing within the material universe.

This is... the Newborn was stunned; it had never witnessed such a phenomenon before.

But if one had to say, it had actually seen it.

When it hid in the shadows of the pipes, spying on the brutal battle between the Possessed Marine and the Ultramarines, it had once seen this mosaic-like blurring and distortion on the Possessed Marine—that exact state of switching and flashing between existence and non-existence.

The bulge on the Chaos Space Marine's chest grew larger and higher.

The bone plates had been stretched apart, and the flesh had been expanded until it was nearly translucent.

It's coming!

It's about to emerge!

The Newborn held its breath.

On the battlefield of Terra, the fierce fighting continued.

Horus sat in command, deploying troops and directing the battle with sweeping authority.

He and the Word Bearers chaplain beside him could both feel that the eyes of the entire galaxy were focused on this pivotal campaign; the gods of the highest heavens were all watching them.

Suddenly, at that very moment.

Both of them, along with the Chaos forces in the traitor camp, felt in unison that the gods had shifted their gaze away from them.

Kor Phaeron looked toward the sky in disbelief, then down at the Book of Lorgar in his hands.

The Warmaster widened his eyes in disbelief, flames of rage burning within them.

It was a rage born of being slighted.

He could not imagine that anything more important than the Battle of Terra could exist at this very moment.

On the transport ship Bloody Worm.

"Screee---"

A hoarse, piercing shriek echoed throughout the entire cabin.

A red Xenomorph of a brand-new design burst forth from the chest cavity!

Its body was immensely massive, standing a full three meters tall when upright. Its blood-red, hideous exoskeleton featured a head crest extending backward that was no longer the elongated shape of a common Xenomorph, but rather resembled a "U" shape.

As it shrieked toward the heavens, a strange Psychic Scream radiated from the cramped cabin.

It sent ripples through both the material universe and the Warp.

In the Warp surrounding the Roswell System, the winds changed in an instant; massive Warp storms gathered, and vast, violent Warp energies concentrated.

Within these colorful energy storms, one could clearly distinguish:

The irritable, fiery red from Khorne; the pleasure-seeking, lethal purple from Slaanesh; the eerie, shifting blue belonging to Tzeentch; and the rotting, moldering green, which was Nurgle.

In this instant, the Psychic Scream emitted by this newborn life form caught the attention of the Chaos Four Peddlers, and each of the Chaos Gods saw exactly what they desired within it.

Bloodthirsty and cold, a natural-born species of slaughter.

Ejection, implantation, gestation, chest-bursting... torment.

The fate of the galaxy might be disrupted because of this little thing.

Born and growing among corpses, infecting and spreading among the living.

The four gods stared intently at this newly born life, momentarily ignoring the Warmaster Horus, who was fighting for his life on Terra.

However.

Just at this moment.

In the sky, a meteor shower of gold and red happened to fall directly above the transport ship.

"BOOM---"

Heat sufficient to melt steel, explosions capable of vaporizing moisture, and flames that could incinerate the very air engulfed this entire space.

The entire transport ship, along with the cramped cabin inside, was submerged in a sea of fire...

The orbital bombardment from the Sotharan had arrived at this moment.

The Chaos Four Peddlers were stunned.

1. The AVP Universe refers to the Alien vs. Predator universe.

2. I have forcibly raised the status of the Xenomorph, but based on the pioneering achievements of the Alien series in the field of sci-fi horror and its great status in film history, I feel this little thing is worthy of the status of being watched by the Chaos Four Peddlers simultaneously.

3. After so much foreshadowing, did you readers think a super villain was about to arrive, only for it to be gone on the spot? Hehe, that is my anti-trope~~