Inside the cockpit, two pilots were carrying out their night patrol with nothing to do.
"District 7, no anomalies."
The pilot at the controls was a man whose face was half replaced by a metal prosthesis. He was known as Razor. The mechanical eye in his left socket flickered with a faint red light as it continuously scanned the terrain below. "Radiation levels normal. Life signs... wait."
His voice trailed off.
The red light in his mechanical eye began flickering much faster.
"Large cluster of life signs detected... coordinates: the former Workshop No. 7 preprocessing plant and surrounding mining pits.
"Quantity... calculating."
"What the hell?"
The young man in the copilot's seat, Kid, had a mechanical prosthetic only for his right hand. He leaned over to look at the screen. "A mass migration of mutated creatures?"
"I haven't heard anything about a beast tide recently."
"Not animals."
Razor's voice came through his synthesizer, heavy with metallic gravity. "Signal patterns... human."
"But the numbers don't add up."
The thermal imaging and biological scan on the screen gradually came into focus.
The scan showed countless life-sign dots scattered across the abandoned Workshop No. 7 and the surrounding mining pits, covering several square kilometers.
Some of the dots were clustered inside the workshop, others scattered throughout the pits. Some were moving, while others remained still.
"Those numbers..."
Kid sucked in a breath. "At least thirty or forty people?"
"Wait, they're still increasing... five, six hundred? No, more..."
The scanner's data continued to refresh.
At last, it settled on an unbelievable figure.
"Initial estimate: four to five thousand people."
A rare note of uncertainty crept into Razor's voice. "The signals are being disrupted by the terrain and abandoned metal in the pits, so there may be some margin of error, but the order of magnitude is right."
"Five thousand people?! In the Crimson Bright Wasteland?!"
Kid's voice rose. "That's impossible! Workshop No. 7's been abandoned for ten years. There aren't any settlements within fifty kilometers!"
"Did these people jump out of some rift in space?!"
"I don't know."
Razor had already opened a communications channel, his tone grave. "But this is beyond our ability to handle."
"We need to report it immediately. Use the Chamber's emergency line."
"Understood."
The channel switched, activating a more heavily encrypted frequency.
"Chamber of Commerce Security Command Center, this is Alru Group aerial patrol unit 7."
"We've detected a large, anomalous gathering of people in the area around the Workshop No. 7 preprocessing plant in the Crimson Bright Wasteland. Estimated numbers: four to five thousand. Repeat, four to five thousand."
"Signals are human. Behavior patterns are abnormal, and they're spread across a wide area."
"Requesting further instructions."
There was silence on the channel for a full ten seconds.
Then a man's voice came through, calm to the point of coldness. "Received, unit 7."
"Maintain surveillance. Don't alert them."
"The data has been uploaded to the Chamber of Commerce Security Council. By the way, are you sure your scanner hasn't been blessed by some heretical god?"
Razor and Kid exchanged a glance, both seeing a touch of dark humor in the other's eyes.
On Aurelian, suspecting that an instrument had been affected by a heretical god was a standard joke, though no one actually dared laugh.
"The scanner underwent a purification rite at the Temple of the Machine Cult just last week, sir," Razor replied with a perfectly straight face. "Unless the God of All Machines is in a bad mood today."
"Good."
"Keep watching. Our people are on their way."
The communication cut off.
Razor adjusted their altitude and circled higher above the clouds, minimizing the chance of being spotted.
"Kid, zoom the optical lens all the way in. I want to see who they are."
The high-resolution camera pierced the dim night, transmitting images back to the cockpit screen.
The blurry footage gradually sharpened.
Figures could be seen scattered across the platform outside the abandoned workshop and throughout the mining pits.
They wore matching, rough work clothes. Some carried tools, others seemed to be resting, and still others were hauling something.
There were far too many of them for any normal scavenger group or refugee camp.
"These people..."
Kid stared at the screen, his prosthetic fingers tapping the console unconsciously. "They don't look like rioters or rebels."
"They're... too quiet."
"And they don't seem to be armed."
"But five thousand people appearing out of nowhere under the Chamber's nose is itself the biggest weapon there is."
Razor spoke coldly. "Whoever they are, whatever they want, they'll have to be dealt with—in the name of the Chamber."
They both knew the weight behind those words.
On Aurelian IV, the four major powers fought for influence, but the Simans Chamber had always controlled the fattest slice of the pie:
Pharmaceuticals, healthcare, retail, and every industry tied to people's livelihoods.
That kept them respectable in public and ensured they held a firm seat in the council. It also gave them perfect cover for the dirty business they conducted in secret: human trafficking, organ trading, illegal genetic experiments, and the manufacture of banned drugs.
At least three senior Chamber members served on the Aurelian High Council, and one of them was even a deputy speaker.
That meant that whenever the Chamber wanted something done, the law and its rules tended to bend aside.
And now, five thousand unidentified people had appeared on the outskirts of the Chamber's core industrial zone. It was no different from slapping the Chamber in the face.
"Who do you think is behind this?" Kid asked. "Is the Adons Knight Family up to something?"
"Are the Psykers testing some new trick?"
"Or have those Oil-Guys from the Mechanicus gone crazy again?"
"The Mechanicus doesn't have enough people to waste on something like this."
"The Knight House likes to fight head-on."
"As for the Psykers..."
Razor paused. "They're better at pulling strings behind the scenes than at lining up five thousand cannon fodder."
He shook his head. "Whoever it is, gathering this many people on the Chamber's turf... that's a declaration of war."
"And the Chamber's best at turning people who declare war into raw materials."
He said it casually, but they both knew what it meant.
Alu Pharmaceutical Group was nominally an independent pharmaceutical company, but in reality, it was one of the Chamber's sharpest claws.
The human experiments, genetic sample collection, and organ supply operations conducted in secret all required plenty of raw materials.
In the Chamber's classification system, unidentified gatherings were usually marked as "recoverable resources."
Central Arlu City, Alru Group Headquarters.
Gothic spires and Baroque reliefs blended together. The enormous stained-glass windows depicted the heroic saga of the Group's expansion across Aurelian under the leadership of its founder, Old Alu.
Of course, the story had been heavily embellished.
Nine floors underground, at the Simans Chamber's Security Council office at Alru.
It was three times larger than the Alru Group's command center. Sixteen holographic screens lined the walls, displaying surveillance footage from every key area in Arlu City and its surroundings.
Twelve operators sat at the consoles, the Chamber's emblem embroidered on their uniforms: interlocking golden scales and gears.
At the center of the room, three men stood before the main screen, dressed in deep-purple robes and silver-trimmed cloaks.
They were permanent members of the Simans Chamber's Security Council at Alru Group, reporting directly to the Chamber's highest leadership.
At that moment, the main screen displayed a live feed and data stream transmitted by Shadow Crow 7. Even the well-traveled council members frowned at the dense mass of life-sign dots.
"Four to five thousand people..."
The oldest council member, a bald man with several surgical scars on his face, spoke quietly. "They appeared in the Crimson Bright Wasteland without a sound."
"Is the intelligence department just sitting around doing nothing?"
"We've already checked, Director."
A younger council member pulled up the data. "There are no records of any large population movements in the past three months."
"No transport records, no supply lines, not even a single sighting. These people appeared as if they'd sprung out of the stone."
"A Warp jump?" another council member speculated. He was a tall, thin man whose right eye had been replaced by a complex mechanical prosthesis. "Or some kind of accident?"
"Or did a Psyker perform a mass summoning?"
"If it was a Psyker summoning, our psychic monitors would have registered it."
The Bald Director shook his head. "But the psychic readings from the Crimson Bright Wasteland have been completely normal over the past twenty-four hours. The background noise was slightly higher, but that could be radiation from waste in the mining pits."
He paused, then delivered his judgment. "However they got here, they're on our turf now."
"And the Chamber won't allow any unauthorized force to gather in its own backyard."
"Alru Group has already dispatched a rapid-response force," the younger council member reported. "Two battalions, two hundred elite troops."
"But they say the target numbers far exceed the estimate and are requesting reinforcements."
"Send them reinforcements."
The Bald Director didn't hesitate. "Deploy the third and fourth battalions, then pull five companies from the Cleaners."
"Tell the commander on the front line: capture as many alive as possible."
Before you continue